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﻿Title: Feminism and Sex-Extinction
Author: Kenealy, Arabella
Language: English
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FEMINISM AND SEX-EXTINCTION
* * * * *
OLIVE SCHREINER'S GREAT BOOK
WOMAN & LABOUR
_Large Crown 8vo. Cloth._
8s. 6d. net
"The feelings which are behind the various women's movements could not
find clearer or more eloquent expression than they do in this remarkable
book."
_The Daily Mail._
"At last there has come the book which is destined to be the prophecy
and the gospel of the whole awakening."
_The Nation._
T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD., LONDON.
* * * * *
FEMINISM AND SEX-EXTINCTION
by
ARABELLA KENEALY L.R.C.P. (DUBLIN)
"_A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can
a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit._"
"_Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them._"
London
T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd.
1 Adelphi Terrace
First published in 1920
All rights reserved
FOREWORD
Feminism, the extremist--and of late years the predominant cult of the
Woman's Movement, is Masculinism.
It makes for such training and development in woman, of male
characteristics, as shall equip her to compete with the male in every
department of life; academic, athletic, professional, political,
industrial. And it neither recognises nor admits in her natural
aptitudes differing from those of men, and fitting her, accordingly, for
different functions in these. It rejects all concessions to her
womanhood; even to her mother-function. It repudiates all privileges for
her. Boldly it demands a fair field only and no favour; equal rights,
political and social, identical education and training, identical
economic opportunities and avocations, an identical morale, personal and
public.
In _Woman and Labour_, Miss Olive Schreiner sums in a line the Feminist
objective: "_We take all labour for our province._" And this is the text
of the Feminist creed; the elimination of sex-differences and the
abolition of sex-distinctions in every department of life and activity.
Feminists anticipate--the militant faction with zest--fierce economic
encounters between the sexes now that, War ended, our men, having fought
their own and woman's battle in the trenches, are returning to reclaim
their places in the world of work. Secure in that possession which is
"nine-tenths of the law," and armed with their new powers of
enfranchisement, it is further anticipated that the usurpers will be
able triumphantly to stem the masculine reflux, and to retain, on all
hands, their new industrial footing.
By showing that, contrary to Feminist doctrine, the division of Labour
into two sexes, so to speak, is as natural and is as indispensable to
Human Progress as is the division of Life into two sexes, the purpose of
this book is to dissuade women from exploiting a world's misfortunes for
their own immediate profit, and to reconcile them, in their profounder
and more vital interests and in those of the Race, to surrender freely
all the essentially masculine employments into which mischance has cast
them.
Human evolution and progress have resulted absolutely from an opposite
trend, in inherence and development, of the two sexes, as regards Life
and characteristics, aptitude and avocation. The progressive
differentiations and specialisations of vital processes and living
forms, whereby human character and faculty have been increasingly
advanced to higher powers, reach their most admirable culmination in the
complex division of Humanity into two genders; each of which is enabled,
by way of such complex specialisation, to promote, to intensify and to
dignify its own allotted order of qualities. To oppose and frustrate
this natural dispensation, whereby Human development is achieved by the
two sexes travelling along diametrically opposite lines of Ascent, is to
nullify all that civilisation has secured, and to transform the impulse
of Progress into one of Decadence.
Nature, marvellously prescient in all her processes, has provided that
the sexes, by being constituted wholly different in body, brain and
bent, do not normally come into rivalry and antagonism in the fulfilment
of their respective life-rôles. Their faculties and functions, being
complementary and supplementary (and obviously best applied, therefore,
in different departments of Life and of Labour), men and women are
naturally dependent upon one another in every human relation; a
dispensation which engenders reciprocal trust, affection and
comradeship.
Feminist doctrine and practice menace these most excellent previsions
and provisions of Nature by thrusting personal rivalries, economic
competition and general conflict of interests between the sexes.
Should any reader find in these pages allusions and passages which,
without biological or medical knowledge, may not be wholly clear to him,
let him remember that these are addressed to such as have dipped more
deeply into the subjects dealt with.
The main outlines and implications of the new Hypothesis presented here,
of the origin and evolution of Sex, are all that he requires to grasp,
in order to follow the argument of the book in its relation to Feminist
methods.
ARABELLA KENEALY, L.R.C.P.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
FOREWORD v
BOOK I
WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN EVOLUTION
I. IMPASSIONED FALLACIES OF FEMINISM 3
II. INCREASING DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MALE AND
FEMALE SEX-CHARACTERISTICS AND FUNCTIONS
ARE THE MAIN FEATURE OF HUMAN ADVANCE 21
III. THE MYSTERY OF SEX AND SEX-TRANSMISSION 35
IV. ONE SIDE OF BODY IS MALE, THE OTHER SIDE IS FEMALE 51
V. MASCULINE MOTHERS PRODUCE EMASCULATE SONS BY
MISAPPROPRIATING THE LIFE-POTENTIAL OF MALE OFFSPRING 73
BOOK II
WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN DECADENCE
I. DECLINE AND FALL OF ANCIENT CIVILISATIONS
DUE TO FEMINISM 95
II. THE EVOLUTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE 109
III. THE EXTINCTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE 126
IV. THE WOMAN BRAIN: ITS POWERS AND DISABILITIES 146
V. MALE AND FEMALE SEX-INSTINCTS AND MORALE
DIAMETRICALLY DIFFERENT 166
VI. FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DISASTROUS
TO INFANT-LIFE AND HUMAN FACULTY 190
VII. FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DESTRUCTIVE
OF WOMANLY ATTRIBUTES, MORALE AND PROGRESS 219
VIII. DANGEROUS SEPARATION OF WOMEN INTO TWO
ORDERS: FEMINISTS AND FEMININISTS 242
IX. THE IMPENDING SUBJECTION OF MAN 264
APPENDIX
FURTHER EVIDENCES IN SUPPORT OF BIOLOGICAL AND
MENDELIAN PROPOSITIONS ADVANCED IN BOOK I 292
BOOK I
WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN EVOLUTION
CHAPTER I
IMPASSIONED FALLACIES OF FEMINISM
"The sexual love which has its origin in what is external and
accidental may easily be turned to hate, a kind of madness that is
nourished on discord; but that love, on the other hand, is lasting
which has its source in freedom of soul and in the will to bear and
bring up children."--_Spinoza._
I
There is no subject save that of Religion about which so much
impassioned fallacy has been spoken and written as has been spoken and
written round the Woman Question.
For more than half a century--since Mill wrote his famous _Subjection_,
indeed--it has become an increasing vogue to regard Woman as a martyr;
more or less sainted, more or less crushed and effaced beneath the
iron-heeled tyrannies, personal, economic, and political, of the
oppressor, Man. And it has been in the spirit of this conviction and in
fervid endeavours--indignant and chivalrous on the part of the one sex,
and still more indignant and but little less chivalrous on the part of
the other--to liberate unhappy victims from a barbarous oppression, that
most of the impassioned fallacy has been spoken and written, and doughty
deeds done.
At the certain cost, therefore, of being stigmatised as a reactionary
(severely qualified), I propose to unmask some of these which I believe
to be baseless obsessions, and to present a wholly new--and, I hope, a
more veracious and inspiring version of the case between the sexes.
To begin with, I assert boldly that the so-called Subjection of Woman,
very far from having been a cruel injustice merely, on the part of man,
has served, on the contrary, as a blessing and an inestimable benefit
not only to herself but to the Race bound up in her. A blessing often
rough and painful in its methods, during epochs when all other methods
were both rough and painful, attended, too, by wrongs and cruelties;
yet, in the main, operating vastly to her well-being and advancement
and, in hers, to those of the Race.
Looking back upon the hard and bloody routes of Evolution whereby the
human Races have attained to present-day developments, we see our
forbears groping blindly, fighting blindly, advancing blindly;
stumbling, falling, picking up again; making new departures only
hopelessly to lose the road; making new departures, now to find it and
trudge on. In all its painful and laborious phases, a terrible and
sordid climb. Yet, nevertheless, in its great annals of Ascent, a noble
and a wondrous March of Progress.
And whether we are Religionists or Evolutionists--or are sufficiently
broad-minded to be both--the history of Life is seen to have been a
history of deathless effort, never ceasing, never waning; renewed with
every generation; intensified by every further acquisition of new power,
as, with every further recognition of new goals and problems, the
ever-increasing Purpose and the ever-increasing perplexity and
complexity of The Purpose revealed itself at every step. It becomes
increasingly clear, moreover, that Creation, or Creative Evolution (to
employ Professor Bergson's phrase), has been the resultant of a
progressive aggregation of Atomic Matter about some vast immanent
_Idea_, slowly and by infinitesimal degrees materialising in the
objective. Very much as bricks are grouped about the pre-conceived plan
of a house, and could not be assembled in the building of the simplest
tool-hut without predetermination of the site of every brick, and of
the relation of every brick to every other.
And in all those past ages of conflict, bringing Order out of Chaos,
Progress out of Order, and an ever-increasing domination of blind Energy
and Inorganic Matter by Mind and Purpose, the fighting male it has been
who, in his conquest of the Earth as in his conquest of other fighting
males, both brute and human, has borne the greater heat and burden of
the day. Women have striven also--toil has been the crux of their
development as of their mates. But men have striven twofold. While women
toiled in the security of homes, the sword, the blunderbuss or
press-gang, or the equivalent of these, according to the epoch, awaited
men and still await them at most street-corners of the arduous male
career.
Women have suffered more, _psychically_; because this way lay their
nature and their human lot. Men have suffered more, _materially_;
because here lay theirs. And since advancement comes by suffering, women
are reaping to-day the harvest of past travail of their sex, in the
higher psychical development which now characterises that sex. During
centuries when men were vastly too hard-pressed by the struggle for
barest existence to have been aware that they possessed souls, women
were privileged to be aware of theirs--by the affliction thereof.
The immediate purpose of this fencing of the women behind the stronger
frames, the stronger wills, and stronger brains of fighting males was
the Racial one, of course. While men battled with environment and with
alien aggressors for their lives and for their food, as for those of the
family, the sheltered women were alike the loom and cradle of the Race.
As well, they made havens, or homes, for the fighters to return to for
sleep and refreshment. They plied a simple, primitive agriculture,
practised a primitive healing art, and otherwise evolved The
Humanities. But since mortal power is limited, power expended in one
direction is power withdrawn from some other. Power spent in battle is
power lost to progress. The woman who, with the instinct for home and as
shelter for her babes, laid the foundations of Architecture in a hut of
mud, was enabled to do this solely by virtue of masculine protection.
It is in peace only that Progress arises, in leisure that The Arts
evolve. And woman, walled in by the lives of the males, found leisure of
body and mind to pluck flowers for the adorning of her hut, to shape
platters of clay, and, later, even for embellishment of these with crude
designs. Thus she was the first artist.
The fighting male was--by necessity--destructive. He invented a club.
The female was--by privilege--constructive. She invented the needle (a
fish-bone, doubtless). And while the male transmitted to offspring his
virile fighting and destructive qualities, woman tempered and humanised
these by incorporating with them her milder traits and artistries of
peace. Lacking the male aggressive and protective faculties, however,
increasing in skill and resource with his ever further Adaptation to
(and of) environment, woman's gentler and humanising aptitudes would
have had neither opportunity for evolution, nor scope for exercise and
further sway.
II
I have been reading an account, by a naturalist, of some phases in the
life-history of crabs. And it is interesting to find even among
creatures so low in the Life-scale (although Darwin regarded these as
the most intelligent of _crustaceæ_) that same instinct of protection of
the female which is seen in the higher orders of creation.
A crab, being encased in an unyielding shell, is able to increase its
growth only by "casting" its shell and developing one of larger size
over its increased bulk. During the interval between casting an old
shell and acquiring a new one, the crab in its soft, pulpy condition is
readily injured, or falls prey to its natural enemies. To protect itself
as well as may be, it shelters in rocky crevices or in other available
hiding-places. This shell-casting occurs in both sexes, of course. But
the circumstances under which the change is made differ widely in the
sexes. For while the male-crab has no protector during his defenceless,
shell-less state, his shell is cast a month or more earlier than occurs
in the female; after which he feeds up, in order to be in superior
fighting trim for her protection during her shell-casting phase.
Fishermen describe him as then spreading himself over her as a hen
covers her chicks, and in her defence desperately attacking all comers.
The result of such protection of the female is that, although males are
larger and fiercer, "hen-crabs" are numerous, while males are scarce.
The like is true of nearly every species. The males protect the females.
Even the gorilla, savage and most terrible of beasts, lies at night on
guard beneath the tree in which his mate and offspring sleep. If need
arise, he fights to the death in their defence.
With regard to the chivalrous devotion of male-birds, Olive Schreiner
thus comments in _Woman and Labour_ (an example of that I have ventured
to describe as the "impassioned fallacy" hurtling round the Woman
Question): "Along the line of bird-life and among certain of its
species, sex has attained its highest æsthetic, and one might almost say
intellectual, development on earth ... represents the realisation of the
highest sexual ideal which haunts humanity."
(This however, less, I fear, to accredit the male-sex with chivalry than
to discredit the human male by ornithological comparison!)
* * * * *
One does not profess that such protective rôle of males--beast and bird
and crab--is the outcome of sentiment. It is instinctive, subconscious.
Nature's purpose being to preserve and to perpetuate species, she
achieves this by safeguarding the female. The province of the male in
reproduction is but slight and brief. It exacts so little from him as to
interfere not at all with those other masculine activities which are the
function of his sex.
Whereas, as Professor Lester Ward says, "Woman [and the female of all
species] _is_ the Race." Out of her blood and bone and vital powers she
evolves and fashions it, nurtures and ministers to it.
III
For the preservation of species, two rôles are essential: the Male rôle
of Combat, demanding strength and boldness, resource and
fighting-quality, in order to protect and provide for the female and
offspring; and the Female rôle of Devotion and Self-surrender, in order
to nurture offspring ante-natally, and, after birth, to nurture and to
tend its helplessness.
Now all but biologists, perhaps, take it as matter-of-course that Love
had its origin in Sex.
Seeing love between the sexes as the strongest and most dominant of the
civilised passions, it is natural to infer that it was born of the
instinctive attraction between male and female, and that this
instinctive attraction, with the growth and expansion of faculty, mental
and temperamental, has evolved to the high and tender issues to be found
in latter-day romantic passion; theme of poets, novelists, artists;
richest and most exquisite of life's emotions; inspiration and motive of
the finest human achievements. A passion which, for a space at least,
transfigures the natures and ennobles the lives of all but the crass and
the sordid.
Nevertheless--Love did not arise out of sex. The sex-relation in primal
men and women held no element of affection; no sympathy, tenderness,
self-sacrifice, or other attribute of Love. On the part of the female,
it was compulsory surrender and the habit of surrender to superior
strength, mitigated, doubtless, by a subconscious instinct to secure
offspring. In the male, it was impulse as tyrannous and selfish as was
the instinct to kill. Like the instinct to kill, a factor in it made for
fitness for survival. There was in it, accordingly, an element of
instinctive selection. But the selection made for survival-fitness
merely in the mate. It owed nothing to sentimental appeal exercised by
one female, and lacking in another. The instinct to mate was implanted
by Nature for the continuation of species. If its observance contained
an element of gratification, it held no more of reciprocity than did the
gratification of that stronger lust, to kill, include a consideration of
the feelings of the prey, or than greed of any other form of possession
extends a grace of reciprocal benefit to the thing acquired.
Modern savages have no conception of sexual love. There are no
love-songs, no courtship, no affection in their matings. The males marry
mainly in order to secure wives to work for them. And they select strong
women because these are best fitted for work. Or they select women who
have some or another small possession. Biological instinct is a factor,
doubtless, but it is not a factor of sentiment.
In his fine book, _Natural Law in the Spiritual World_, Professor
Drummond says:
"Probably we have all taken for granted that husbands and wives
have always loved one another. Evolution takes nothing for granted
... in the lower reaches of Human Nature, husband and wife do not
love one another ... for the vast mass of mankind during the long
ages which preceded historic times, conjugal love was probably all
but unknown....
"The idea that the existence of sex accounts for the existence of
love is untrue. Marriage among early races has nothing to do with
love. Among savage peoples, the phenomenon everywhere confronts us
of wedded life without a grain of love. Love then is no necessary
ingredient of the sex-relation; it is not an outgrowth of passion.
Love is love and has always been love, and has never been anything
lower."
Even to-day, despite the evolution of the higher faculties, despite long
centuries of inherited habit and tradition, and despite the circumstance
that in all the nobler types of men and women the sex-instinct is
spiritualised by affection and understanding--Even in this late day of
civilisation, the male sex-instinct may be seen still in all its native
tyranny and selfishness; seeking gratification in sensuality and
cruelty, with callous disregard alike of the welfare as of the suffering
of its victim. In the violation of women and children that occurs both
in peace and in war, the instinct manifests as an impulse of aggression,
and the sex-function as one of brutality or ruthless lust.
IV
Respecting the origin of Mind and Emotion, Charles Darwin said:
"In what manner the mental powers were first developed in the
lowest organisms, is as hopeless an inquiry as how life itself
first originated."
And Huxley:
"I know nothing, and never hope to know anything of the steps by
which the passage from molecular movement to states of
consciousness is effected. The two things are on two utterly
different platforms, the physical facts go along by themselves and
the mental facts go along by themselves."
While Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace (the biologist who was working out the
theory of Natural Selection simultaneously with Darwin, both unaware
that the other was working in the same direction) attributes to a
Creative act of God, all the moral and intellectual qualities which have
been super-added in man to those lesser and simpler ones he possesses in
common with the higher animals. Wallace describes this as a "Divine
Influx," and regards it as being wholly distinct and apart from the slow
and gradual processes of Natural Selection.
But yet, in point of fact, what was it that inspired and energised the
earlier processes, if not this same Divine Influx? The simpler processes
must, from their earliest rudimentary beginnings, have been leading up
to the later and more complex. And the later and more complex were,
surely, continuous with the simpler--since Nature abhors miracles, and
works by slow progressive biological sequences.
Nothing shows as more impersonal than a crystal; cold, hard, senseless,
motionless. And yet in crystals is the element of Life, even the power
of reproduction, showing factors of sex already operative in them. While
living bodies, charged with warmth, mobility, sentience, intelligence,
have Inorganic Matter for their basis of construction. And that
Inorganic elements are very far from being the impersonal things they
seem, but are linked by subtle correspondences to living Mind and vital
powers, is shown by their effects on living processes and consciousness.
Given as medicines, digestion (which is a species of rapid evolution
from lower to higher forms of energy) develops such vital inherences
within them as prove their apparent impersonality to contain a principle
continuous not only with living processes, but with the highest
mentality.
Professor Leduc observes in his illuminating book, "The Mechanism of
Life," "_the ordinary physical forces have, in fact, a power of
organisation infinitely greater than has been hitherto supposed by the
boldest imagination_."
Coralline structures and beautiful shells, fungi, leaves, and plants
bearing coloured, flowerlike blooms spring into growth when a formless
fragment of calcium salt is dropped into a chemical solution. And these
"Osmotic growths," artificially produced, possess far greater complexity
of structure and of function than do the simpler living organisms of
Nature.
The evidences of a Vast Stupendous Plan, which every further scientific
discovery still further emphasises, are slowly forcing from our men of
Science the confession that behind the marvellous phenomena their
findings reveal, and which they are powerless to explain, must lie a
Cause, occult and irresistible, an Impulse, all-pervading,
incomprehensible.
Bergson describes an _élan vital_--a living impetus--determining such
phenomena.
In his Presidential address to the British Association at Dublin, in
1908, Professor J. S. Haldane summed up as follows the position of
Physiological Science: "The point now reached is that the conceptions of
Physics and Chemistry are insufficient to enable us to understand
physiological phenomena."
Weismann says: "Behind the co-operating forces of Nature, we must admit
a Cause ... inconceivable in its nature, of which we can only say one
thing with certainty, that it must be theological."
Drummond says: "Evolution is Advolution,--better, it is Revelation--the
phenomenal expression of the Divine, the progressive realisation of the
Ideal, the Ascent of Love."
If, then, we admit Life to be the product of a Divine Influx, whereby
Inorganic Matter has been, by way of evolutionary processes,
increasingly empowered to fructify in living form and faculty, Human
Attributes are seen to be the flower of Spiritual seed, which, sown in
Life, has germinated; has struck roots of biological function into
living flesh and put forth leaves in living traits; has developed in
physiological processes and blossomed in powers of Mind and of body. And
as the stronger and deeper the grip of its roots in the earth, the
taller and nobler the oak towers heavenward, so it must be with human
characteristics. The deeper and more firmly the seedling faculties
strike roots in living function, the fuller and more potent springs the
impulse toward that evolutionary perfection which is the goal of Human
Being.
If, however, living processes are the resultant of a Divine Influx, they
are Spiritual processes. Life is then a manifestation in Matter, of
Spirit. All the developments of Life are Spiritual phenomena, therefore.
The imperfection and evil found in living creatures are not attributes
of Life. They are crudities of rudimentary organisation, or are failures
in or aberrations from the normal development of Life.
V
In the Evolution of Faculty, living traits are seen to have been all the
while attaining to higher power by the differentiation and development
of special organs to subserve their fuller function, their finer
conscious apprehension, and their more complex manifestation on the
material plane.
The brain has been specialised thus to serve as the organ of
Consciousness; the eye, of Vision; the ear, of Hearing; the hand, of
Touch and of manipulation. The lowest organisms possess no such
specialised organs of sense or of consciousness. Nor are they equipped
with special reproductive organs. They reproduce by cleavage; by
budding a small portion of themselves, which, when separated, grows to a
mature organism.
With other differentiations and specialisations of Function and Faculty,
there has developed--for the all-important racial purpose of creating
ever higher and more potent living species--the highly-complex human
reproductive system, which, by its close and subtle nervous alliance
with the brain, has become the medium and the instrument of a new and
irresistible emotion. So that it serves not only for the perpetuation of
a complex species, but, moreover, for the attraction, by natural
affinity, of the mates best suited to one another.
And in course of evolutionary progress, the emotion of Love has been all
the while more and more so leavening and inspiring sex-attraction with
its purer and more tender attributes, that human passion has come to
combine--in those of higher nature--the flame and energy of physical
attraction with the tenderness and devotion of altruistic affection.
With the result that human parenthood, thus quickened and spiritualised,
has become ever further empowered to evolve more highly intelligised,
more beautiful and more efficient types of offspring.
That Passion, pure and simple, has evolved out of the Male sex-instinct
is certain. Even in its chivalrous development of romantic passion, are
found, in transfigured form, that flame and urgence for possession which
manifest crudely and cruelly in the primal male-instinct. Without this
virile ardour, indeed, the sex-relation is but a poor and tepid, or a
cold and sensual thing.
Yet Passion is not Love.
That meekness and forbearance, humility and self-surrender have been
reared in the Female sex-instinct of submission to passion (primarily in
aversion and fear more often than in acquiescence) is equally certain.
And without these chastening factors to temper, soften and anneal, the
sex-relation is a fierce and tyrannous concern. But no more than
passion, is submission Love. Neither in passion nor in submission, pure
and simple, is there joy of surrender or welding communion.
Nevertheless, since every human faculty must have its roots in living
function, and every living function must possess some physical organ in
which its processes occur, from what human function sprang the Love that
is selfless, altruistic and pitiful; soul and inspiration of the most
sacred emotions--self-sacrifice, charity, mercy, devotion, tenderness?
In what nursery of Human Consciousness was this fair and gentle blossom
sown; to spring, to develop, and to make for gracious growth?
Since, although it has come to lend its purity and sweetness to the
Sex-passion, it neither sprang from nor has been reared in sex-instinct,
is it a product of Parental Affection? Is it an evolution of the
self-negation and the tenderness of parents for their children?
VI
Throughout Nature, the parental instinct is seen as a unique
development, detached from and high above all other developments.
Demanding, as it does, the complete surrender and self-denying labours
of one individual in the interests of another, it differs from and
traverses all other dictates. It impels a creature whose every instinct
it had been--whose religion of biological survival it had been,
indeed--to be wholly self-centred in its every aim and action, all at
once to make another creature the focus of its interests and efforts.
Where for a scratch, for a glance, the fierce female would have fallen
tooth and nail upon another, now she surrenders meekly to the pangs of
bringing offspring into life--and straightway licks and suckles the
frail being that has riven her. Where she would furiously have driven
off, or would have killed, another creature that approached her food,
now she gives herself as food for this. Where lesser Fitness for
survival on another's part had been signal for making such her prey, now
Unfitness in the extremest degree claims her devotion and care.
Superfluous to cite cases of maternal altruism. The mildest and most
timid among creatures becomes fierce and courageous in defence of her
young. Style it "merely instinct," if you will. It is none the less
heroic on the part of every individual that obeys it, and does not obey
it blindly and mechanically merely, but employs all her poor wit and
resource to suit her heroism to the special circumstance.
Without care and attention from the moment of its birth, the life of an
infant would be reckoned in hours. The higher the organism, the more and
for the longer period its infancy exacts unceasing devotion and nurture.
Fish and moth and other species of low order are cast off in the egg.
Chicks scramble out of the shell.
The higher their grade in the scale of organisation and intelligence,
the more helpless and incapable young creatures are to feed and to fend
for themselves. Kittens are born blind and helpless, but after a few
days they see and crawl about. The elephant-mother suckles and
safeguards her baby-elephant for two whole years.
Now, were there no purpose in all this--Were it not that such devotion
to offspring serves as impulse and spur to the evolution and development
of faculty in parents, Nature, in planning the complex human species,
would, surely, have endowed the human infant and child with fuller
powers of self-preservation.
Were there other functions and aptitudes the exercise whereof would
better stimulate and foster human progress, it is inconceivable that
children would be, and would be for so long, the helpless, feckless,
dependent mortals that they are.
For ten long lunar months, the human babe is part of its mother; homed
in the nest of her body, warmed by her warmth, fed by her blood. She
breathes for it, digests for it, assimilates for it, exercises for it.
For ten further lunar months, it is dependent upon her for the food by
which it lives. For nearly a year, save for an inept power of creeping,
with but small sense of direction, it requires to be moved and carried
everywhere. For years it must be washed, dressed, combed, laid down to
sleep at night, got up in the morning, taken for rides or for walks,
played with, bidden, chidden; comforted, warmed, cooled; defended,
cherished, instructed--in a hundred ways to be gently and progressively
adapted to life, by way of a more or less highly-specialised
environment. Even when no longer helpless, it must be provided for in
the matters of housing, food, clothing, education. It must be instructed
in a means of livelihood, and started on its young career.
Among the poorer classes the child depends upon its hard-worked parents
for a period varying between twelve and sixteen years. In the
professional classes, the young son and daughter are not fully qualified
for independent existence before the ages of twenty-three or
twenty-five. In ill-health, in brain defect, and in other incapacities,
parents must provide for their offspring for life.
And seeing how the demands of the young, and the response and exactions
of the parents multiply and amplify proportionally with the higher
evolution of both, we are forced to believe that the small
survival-value of the child, owing to its native unadaptedness to
environment, is part of The Plan, and that it subserves some high and
complex purpose in human development.
VII
An essential obligation of Parenthood is, that, in order to fulfil this
duly, the parents require to undergo a wholly new and intrinsic
adjustment of faculty. Having arrived already at a complex adaptation to
a complex civilised environment, in physique and character, in mentality
and habit, now, by a revolutionary reversal of their human progress,
they must re-adapt to the simplest of all creatures and conditions--a
helpless, puling infant in a cradle.
Where they had had a whole world, perhaps, of intellectual interests and
social pursuits to engage them, now they forgather beside a cot
and--according as they are human or are not--lose themselves, brain and
heart and soul, in the puling, impotent thing. They make themselves eyes
and ears, arms and legs for it; carriage, chair and bed. They gaze,
entranced, upon the marvel of the opening and shutting of its eyes. It
yawns; they tremble lest it dislocate a jaw. It sneezes; now they
shudder lest it may have taken cold. It gurgles, and they are
transported to a seventh heaven.
Never has either been equally fluttered at their recognition by an
exalted personage as both exult when flattered by the flicker of an
eyelash that it distinguishes its father from its mother; or either from
its nurse. Both perhaps are self-contained and philosophic beings, yet
its cry distracts them; scatters their composure to the winds. The inept
thing cannot even tell them what it wants. Its cry for food is much the
same as is its cry when it requires to be laid down, or lifted up. When
its milk is not sweet enough, its inarticulate fury is expressed in
notes identical--so far as they can judge--with those of its impotent
wrath when a pin-point pricks it.
But whatsoever the cause, to the winds the parental composure is
scattered, as hither and thither they scurry, distraught, seeking a
reason and a remedy. And this, of course, had been their tyrant's
purpose. He had meant to strike panic in his parents' hearts. He was
vexed or empty, or was otherwise uneasy. And behold the penalties of
those who suffer him to be vexed or empty, or otherwise uneasy!
And whether they are rough, hard-working persons who have neither time
nor taste for fuss and nonsense; whether they are the Archbishop of
Canterbury and Mrs. Archbishop, Sir Isaac and Lady Newton, or the
Emperor and Empress of Japan, it is all the same to Baby. No other uses
have they in his absurd judgment than to obey his slightest gurgle.
And the wonder of the business is that they too--provided they be
normal, wholesome-minded, natural-hearted persons--are of similar
opinion. Even a Professor of Archæology must feel a twinge of some
emotion when his first baby cuts its first tooth. King Lion himself
suffers it with patience when his cub scratches his royal countenance,
or gets its milk-teeth into his prize-bone.
The whole face of the earth is transformed by the Baby, indeed. And how
much it is transformed for the better! It is not too much to say that it
is humanised, redeemed. The most grudging of curmudgeons murmurs only a
little to surrender his place at the fire to The Baby. The thirsty thief
forbears to drink his infant's milk.
In his great story, _The Luck of Roaring Camp_, Bret Harte has shown,
and has shown as probable, the uplifting and regenerating influence that
"The Luck"--its mother a sinner, its father, Heaven alone knew
who!--exercised upon a rough community of vicious men.
"It wrastled wi' my finger," says one in an awed whisper. To cover
sentiment he adds, "the durn'd little cuss!" But carefully he segregates
the member sanctified by the tiny, satin touch, from the other fingers
of his wicked hand.
CHAPTER II
INCREASING DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MALE AND FEMALE SEX-CHARACTERISTICS AND
FUNCTIONS ARE THE MAIN FEATURE OF HUMAN ADVANCE
"The most beautiful witness to the Evolution of Man is the Mind of
a little child.... It was ages before Darwin or Lamarck or
Lucretius, that Maternity, bending over the hollowed cradle in the
forest for a first smile of recognition from her babe, expressed
the earliest trust in the doctrine of development. Every mother
since then is an unconscious Evolutionist, and every little child a
living witness to Ascent."--_Professor Drummond._
I
Tracing the attribute of Love to its source in the parental function, it
becomes clear that this function cannot be dismissed thus in a phrase.
There are two parents. And the parts played by these, respectively, not
only differ widely in their nature, but they are signally
disproportionate in their share of the labours involved. For while the
male bears the brunt of the struggle with environment, for his own and
for survival of his mate and offspring, upon the female falls the
biological stress of pregnancy and lactation, and the material cares of
upbringing.
The reproductive function of the male is but slight and cursory. With
the female lies the tax of havening the embryo before birth, of
nurturing it with her blood and substance, of suffering the drain it
makes upon her vital energy, the burden of its weight; with, finally,
the anguish and the dangers of delivery. And having come through all
this, the subconscious and involuntary sacrifice is replaced by
further--but now voluntary sacrifices. She not only continues to feed it
with her living substance, but she employs brain and wit and bodily
effort in tending, safeguarding and rearing it.
Meanwhile the sire--among the lower creatures, at all events--detaches
himself with lordly indifference from any portion in these later, as he
went free of the earlier obligations. He shares his prey with her and
with their young. He defends them from the natural enemies of all.
Sometimes he condescends to play for minutes with his cubs. But
excepting among birds, the male parent takes little or no part in the
upbringing of his family.
As with Love, so with Fatherhood, we take it as matter-of-course that
this sprang and has evolved to present developments directly out of
natural instinct. But as Love did not evolve out of the sex-instinct,
neither did father-love evolve from a paternal instinct inherent in the
lower animals and in primal man.
Of this, Professor Drummond says:
"The world was now beginning to fill with Mothers, but there were
no Fathers, ... while Nature has succeeded in moulding a human
Mother and a human child, he still wanders in the forest, a savage
and unblessed soul.
"This time for him is not lost. In his own way he also is at
school, and learning lessons which will one day be equally needed
by humanity. The acquisitions of the manly life are as necessary to
human character as the virtues which gather their sweetness by the
cradle; and these robuster elements--strength, courage, manliness,
endurance, self-reliance--could only have been secured away from
domestic cares.... The Evolution of a Father is not so beautiful a
process as the Evolution of a Mother, but it was almost as
formidable a problem to attack.... If Maternity was at a feeble
level in the lower reaches of Nature, Paternity was
non-existent.... When we leave the Birds and pass on to the
Mammals, the Fathers are nearly all backsliders. Many are not only
indifferent to their young, but hostile; and among the Carnivora
the Mothers have frequently to hide their little ones in case the
father eats them."
In place of saying, therefore, that Love sprang in, and has developed
from the exercise of the parental function, we must say that Love--in
all its higher aspects--sprang and has developed in the _maternal_
function.
But since every attribute, in order to be conscious and realised, is not
only rooted but is reared in living function--out of what living
function did Mother-love evolve? In the exercise of what vital processes
has it been fostered and furthered?
In so far as these involve sacrifice of self in the interests of the
child, the maternal ante-natal processes are processes of
self-surrender. But these, when once incurred, are subconscious and
involuntary. The prospective mother has no choice but to submit to
physiological exactions.
And only a few women--those in whom maternal love is deep beyond the
average--feel affection for their infants before birth.
Since love must have an object upon which to exercise its faculties and
lavish its devotion, it is not, therefore, until the babe is in the
mother's arms that the Love-attribute begins to function. And then the
primal fount of all conscious and voluntary human selflessness and
sacrifice springs afresh in the individual when, in yearning toward the
helpless being in her arms, she wells with tenderness and gives herself
to be its life.
In the altruistic tender yearning of the mother to her babe, whereat her
blood transforms itself to milk, Human Love first sprang and functioned
consciously.
_This is my Body which is given for you.... This is my Blood ... which
is shed for you._
Says Goethe, "There is no outward sign of courtesy that does not rest
on a deep moral foundation." He might have added "and on a great
biological function." Every act of voluntary sacrifice, every impulse of
compassion, mercy, tenderness, devotion, has had its inspiration and its
source in this which is discredited by some as being a merely physical,
and is despised, accordingly, as being an inferior process; this
mystical transmutation of the mother's blood to milk, and the
self-forgetting yearning wherein she yields herself as food for
offspring. By the evolution, upon ever higher planes of consciousness,
of this primarily instinctive sacrifice, not only Motherhood but
Fatherhood too, and the Love-passion between the sexes have been
fructified and purified, and uplifted down the ages. Other acts of
devotion arise out of maternal ministry. But this is the intrinsic
source of all.
Travelling up through all the rudimentary phases of development,
simultaneously and side by side with the male fierce methods for the
Survival of _Fitness_, there was evolving in the female, subconsciously
and secretly, this sacramental impulse which was to inaugurate a new
era--an era wherein charity and ruth were to be born as response to the
claims of _Unfitness_.
The first woman who, of her free-will, gave her breast to her babe was
the Mother of all the Humanities. She it was who prepared the way for
the coming of Christ. By her, Love entered first into human
consciousness.
And by countless generations of such willing tender sacrifice upon the
part of mothers, human love has climbed out of the darkness of blind
subconscious instinct into the Light of a great transfiguration.
It is weighty evidence of the evolutionary impulse inherent in the
function of Lactation, that the development of this maternal trait
engenders species so far higher in organisation and morale than those of
creatures unequipped to suckle offspring, as to set the Mammalia in a
class by themselves in the van of progressive advance. The higher
organisation and morale of such result not only from the
self-surrendering instinct in the mothers of species, but doubtless also
from the superior nutrition promoted in the developing tissues of the
young of species, by the highly-individualised food elements which are
secreted by the maternal living cells.
The vital significance of this new potence in blood to transform itself
to milk for sustenance of offspring is emphasised by the fact that the
Mammalia are warm-blooded creatures. While that this new quickening of
Life by the altruistic parental instinct originates in the female shows
her as medium of that Divine Influx inspiring Creative Evolution, and
evolving faculty by way of living function.
II
The question now arises: If Love and the higher affections had their
origin in the maternal function, how happens it that man, in whom this
capacity is absent, and who is devoid, moreover, of an inherent paternal
instinct, has come, notwithstanding, to possess these higher affections?
One may answer off-hand, with the lightness of the tyro, that these have
been transmitted to him by maternal inheritance.
But complex biological problems are not thus easily explained. Nature
works by processes, not by implications. And the physical functions and
the mental attributes of the sexes are so dissimilar, and have, with
evolution, so diverged by ever further accentuation, that we must seek
for definite biological processes by way of which the male has become
endowed with, and whereby his primal characteristics have been
transformed by the evolution in him of the maternal instinct--under
guise of the wholly new and alien trait of Fatherhood.
A study of Evolution shows the differentiation and intensification of
Sex-characteristics to have been the main feature in Human advance, and
to have been progressively achieved by incalculable centuries of
increasing differentiation and intensification of two opposite orders of
impulse and faculty.
In savages and in all the less civilised races, the personal and
temperamental differences between the sexes are but slight, and last
for no longer than a few years of life. As with other faculties,
Sex-differentiations become ever further intensified and more
complexly defined as development rises in the scale. Man becomes more
man. Woman, more woman. Most notable during the period over which
the human organisation sustains its maximum of condition, these
Sex-characteristics take longer to arrive at their perfection, and are
longer and more fully sustained in the higher races and organisms than
is the case with the lower. Then, with that degeneration of tissue which
sets in with on-coming age, the old man becomes womanish, the old woman
mannish.
It cannot be doubted that human perfection reaches its climax in the
accentuation of the differences between the Sex-characteristics,
physical and mental, of the one sex from those of the other. The best
types of men differ far more from the best types of women than inferior
men and women differ from one another. In body and in attribute, the
sexes are complementary and supplementary. And their dissimilarities are
the measure of their complementary and supplementary values.
Their attraction to one another, their interest and happiness in one
anothers' company, are proportional to the degree in which members of
one sex supply for members of the other, sentiment and qualities lacking
in their own. Mannish women and womanish men are alike incapable of
experiencing and inspiring the love-passion, which charms and
transfigures life for true man and true woman. These unfortunate,
imperfect neuter-persons, because of the deficiency in them of normal
sex attributes and impulse, are shut out from the richest and sweetest,
most sacred emotions of Humanity--precisely as persons of defective
brain are debarred from the richer and fuller appreciations and joys of
consciousness.
And yet, apart and distinct from, although at the root of this abnormal
neuterdom, wherein the traits of one sex are so antagonised by those of
the other that the finest powers of both are nullified--normally,
all men possess latent in them the qualities of Woman; all women
have latent in them the qualities of Man. Otherwise, this third
Neuter-gender--mannish women and womanish men--could not have come into
being.
In crises of life and under other abnormal conditions, the dormant
characteristics of the one sex are seen to emerge in members of the
other, and to become dominant. A woman, in the face of danger, develops
the strength, the courage and the material resource of a man. A man,
when put to it, reveals the gentleness, patience and psychical resource
of a woman. And in neither is this substitution of alien traits
imitative, merely. That it is vital and intrinsic is shown by the fact
that not only mental characteristics, but the body itself becomes
transformed. If the circumstances--exposure to danger, to hard and rough
physical labours or to mental exactions which are the normal of the
male--continue for long, woman's physique, equally with her attributes,
becomes increasingly virile of mode.
A kindred metamorphosis occurs in men. When called upon to exercise for
any length of time the functions of a woman, beside a sick bed, for
example--or, to state it otherwise, when the male in him no longer
receives the stimulus of the natural male rôle and activities--man's
virile qualities decline. He becomes emasculate.
So too in disease. With the vital powers at low ebb, man's virility
ebbs low. He grows soft and sensitive, uncontrolled and emotional, loses
energy and initiative; lapses in outlook and temperament from the
masculine normal. In abnormal states of physical development, men are
puerile or womanish.
Women, as result of like abnormal undevelopment, or after operative
removal of reproductive organs (_propter quos est mulier_) become
mannish of type. In extreme cases the figure changes to a strong and
sturdy maleness, the voice drops to gruffness; manners and speech become
terse and abrupt, the jaw squares; even moustache or beard may develop.
Such women lose, perhaps, every womanly characteristic; refinement of
form, mental delicacy and sensitiveness, emotion, subtlety. They lapse
to the biological grade, not of cultured, but of rough working men. In
lesser degrees of sex-extinction, such as are seen in many of our modern
girls, de-sexed by masculine training, the subjects are boyish merely;
lean, active, restless, hipless, breastless, lacking all those fair,
delicate artistries of face and form, as likewise the complex
sensibility and emotionalism which are the higher characteristics of
their sex.
III
These and other singularities of the phenomenon indicate that man has,
so to speak, a woman concealed in him; woman has a man submerged in her.
The case suggests the little Noah and his wife of the toy weatherglass.
Under some conditions the man in woman emerges temporarily. Under some
conditions the woman in man reveals herself. But the emergence in the
one sex of the characteristics of the other, when appreciable and
permanent, is abnormal and unpleasing, and is obviously degenerative.
Man is at his best when the woman in him is dominated by his natural
virile traits. Woman is at her best when the man in her is sheathed
within her native womanliness. This way, each is a highly evolved and a
finely-specialised creation.
Nevertheless, such possession, in latency, of the qualities of the
other, not only enhances for members of both sexes the potence of their
own, inspiring and enriching these, but it engenders more perfect
sympathy and understanding between them. The woman in man endues him
with intuitive apprehension of the Woman-nature; of its needs and modes,
its disabilities, its sufferings and aspirations. The man in woman
informs her of the intrinsic values of his sterner calibre, and thus
lends her patience with his impatiences, moves her tenderness and care
for him in his rougher, more arduous lot, wins her admiration of his
enterprises and ambitions. Moreover, the man in her strengthens and
intelligises her mental fibre, stiffens and renders more stable and
effective her more pliant will and softer, more delicate aptitudes.
While she, in her turn, endows him with her intrinsic mentalities.
Masculine intellection, pure and simple, is initiative, vigorous,
enterprising; analytical, logical, critical; its outlook rational and
concrete, its disposition just and honest. Capable in the degree of its
virility, of strenuous and sustained endeavour, of keen concentration
and close application; taking nothing for granted, but questioning and
demanding proof of all things, it is an admirable executive agent of
Mind. _Per se_, however, it is rational and deductive, judicial and
judicious, rather than inspirational and creative. The blending with it
of the Woman-faculty in him quickens his male brain by contributing the
emotional element; endues it with intuitive sensibility, fructifies it
with female creativeness.
Thus it blossoms in Imagination--a new talent, which his natural
intellectual energy and executive ability enable him to raise to highest
issues in Inductive Science and the creative Arts.
Sex, with its phenomena of the characteristics of both sexes blended
but, nevertheless, distinctive in the totally dissimilar constitution of
members of both, presents an enigma which all the thinkers of all the
ages have left unsolved.
What is its significance--what its explanation? How has it been
possible--without miracle, but by way of biological sequences of form
and process, of function and faculty--for the divergent characteristics,
physical and mental, of the two sexes to have developed in both, not
only without either order of characteristics (normally) neutralising
those of the other, but, on the contrary, with both orders ever further
intensifying their differences in the sex to which they belong?
By hereditary transmission. True! But by what precise means? Because
Nature achieves her results always by the continuous operation of
unerring Law and intensifying processes, not by eccentricities or
deviations. When she seems to us to skip at random, it means that we
have missed some intermediate footprints linking her progressive
sequences in a long unbroken train.
This problem of human duality, physical and psychical, has baffled not
biologists only, but philosophers, religionists and seers. It fills both
life and literature with puzzles, paradoxes, incongruities. It has been
the source of perpetual misapprehension, misconception,
maladministration, personal and ethical.
It lies at the root of the whole Woman question. It has supplied the
motive--and has made the mischief of the Feminist propaganda and
practice.
Because, in view of the masculine qualities latent in women, allied with
the circumstance that masculine powers are those most profitable and
effective on the plane alike of physics and of economics, it has seemed
an inevitable conclusion that these dormant male potentialities were
_powers lying idle_; virgin soil which, tilled and cultivated, would
yield fruitful harvest. And this for the benefit not of woman solely,
but of Humanity at large. Strangely enough, the converse proposition has
not presented itself. A pity! For it might have brought enlightenment.
Because it presents itself outright in the form of a patent absurdity.
Suppose a Man's Movement which should have had for aim the cult in males
of their potential woman-qualities! Not for an instant could the project
have found footing as being rational, its ends desirable, or as
improving upon Nature. Everywhere is pity or contempt for the effeminate
man. He is regarded as a poor creature, neither one thing nor the other;
as little the peer of true man as he is notably an unworthy counterfeit
of woman.
Yet how is this? Is it that we admit the male-sex to be so vastly and
intrinsically superior to the female that we are not satisfied for half
only, but demand that the whole human species shall be male?
Nevertheless, since masculine qualities, although undeniably present,
are normally latent in women, they must be inferior in power and calibre
to these same qualities in men. Otherwise, in place of remaining in
latency, they would assert themselves like men. Woman's inferior
masculine powers, even when developed to the full, can equip her,
therefore, to be no more than inferior male; "lesser man" merely, in
place of being "diverse"--the highly-differentiated, finely-specialised
being for which Nature would seem to have been shaping in her, during
untold æons of progressive differentiation.
IV
The prevailing notion is that these masculine potentialities dormant in
women are powers common to both sexes, which have been blighted in the
one by long generations of educational and vocational disabilities
precluding exercise and outlet for them. Or that they are powers which
have been dwarfed by long "subjection" of the sex in maternal and
domestic functions mainly.
Consulting Biology, we find that such artificial repression of Faculty
in the mother (even were artificially-repressed faculty transmissible as
such) could in no way have limited itself, in succeeding generations, to
inheritance by daughters. On the contrary, the more we learn of the laws
of Heredity, the more it is seen that Faculty descends from mother to
son, rather than from mother to daughter. And yet, despite the
sex-disabilities, personal and social, which are now condemned as having
precluded the mothers of earlier eras from developing their masculine
abilities, such mothers transmitted masculine characteristics in
ever-increasing degree to successive generations of male offspring.
Whereupon another seeming paradox confronts us. Namely, that the sons of
those earlier women, in whom masculine inherences were permitted to
remain dormant, were notably more virile of body and mind than are the
sons of latter-day emancipated mothers who have sedulously cultivated
and have fully exercised their male proclivities.
And now upsprings a further momentous consideration: Is this cause and
effect? Were the sons of women in whom the potential male had remained
abeyant, more virile of body and brain than are the sons of women who
have cultivated masculine characteristics, solely and absolutely because
the mothers in the latter case had misappropriated to their own uses
powers that belonged by right of heredity to sons? While those other
mothers, by retaining such in latency, preserved them as a rich
inheritance for male heirs. Is it similar, indeed, to the cases of a
mother who realises and expends for her own purposes her sons' financial
patrimony, and of a mother who, expending the interest alone thereof,
retains the capital intact; and is enabled thus to pass it on as
heritage? Is the power held latent in one generation the potential of
the generation following?
It may be asked: Why should woman forgo possession and exercise of
faculties available to her, in order to transmit these to sons? One
might answer as in respect of that other patrimony. If it be true that
she holds these powers in trust merely, they are not hers to spend. To
expend them is to despoil her sons; to make paupers and bankrupts of
them, humanly speaking. Further, since daughters inherit from the
father, the male entail woman forbears to realise and to exploit for her
own uses returns to her sex in the person of her grand-daughter--by
paternal inheritance. For the able father is the parent of the able
daughter.
Thus Nature works with the eternal justice of eternal reciprocity
between the sexes; making them all the while more complexly diverse, but
nevertheless more closely interdependent. So that one sex can neither
progress nor can it regress by itself; but draws the other onward with
it, or drags it back. Thus, the bread of human heritage consigned to the
stream of posterity by one sex, for equipment and furtherance of the
other, returns to the hand of the sex that consigned it.
If this be so--and I hope to prove it so--the woman who develops the
potential male in her defrauds of its lawful racial and personal entail
not only the opposite sex, in the person of her son, but she defrauds of
its dower her own sex too, in the person of her grand-daughter.
Of the interesting and important biological processes underlying the
mystery of the Dual-Sex constitution and its manifold phenomena, I am
about to present a wholly new and--I venture to believe--a wholly true
and convincing elucidation.
_Natura simplex est_, said Newton, _et sibi semper consonans_. (Nature
is simple and always agrees with herself.) Bewilderingly multiple in her
phenomena, she is superbly simple in her principles. By the operation of
her one great Law of Gravitation, she sustains the mighty Solar
systems--and brings the apple to the ground. By the extension,
counterpoise and co-operation of one Primal Cosmic Energy--with its dual
impulses, Centripetal and Centrifugal--she has generated all the diverse
marvels of a Universe. And in view of her simplicity of Principle, it is
conceivable that the Duality of Sex may be an extension into Life of
that same principle of Duality which characterises the vaster Cosmic
phenomena.
If this be true, Man and Woman are the complex resultant of infinitely
many and varied evolutionary differentiations and associations of the
two modes of Primal Energy. If so, the principle of Sex must have
existed before Matter; must have been inherent in Creation before
Creation began to evolve. And if so, Evolution would seem to have had
for its purpose the ever further and fuller manifestation of these dual
and contrary inherences in terms of Life and Sex. While, to judge by
effects, it has had for its means such ever more intimate and intricate
co-operations of these as have resulted in the progressively diverse and
complex developments found to-day in Human Life and Human
Sex-Characteristics.
CHAPTER III
THE MYSTERY OF SEX AND SEX-TRANSMISSION
"The idea that the female is naturally and really the superior sex
seems incredible, and only the most liberal and emancipated minds,
possessed of a large store of biological information, are capable
of realising it."--_Professor Lester Ward._
I
Those happy persons who do not perplex themselves concerning the
intrinsic causes behind all physical phenomena see it as only "natural"
that two parents of opposite sex should produce offspring of both sexes.
And yet it is not only a great mystery, but, on the face of it, it is an
anomaly that a child who may possess an admixture of all the physical
and mental characteristics of its two parents, bears, nevertheless, the
sex and the sex-characteristics of one only. Sex, male or female, breeds
true in nearly every case; the rare exceptions merely emphasising the
rule. The mystery deepens when we realise that every individual is a
product of countless such admixtures of the qualities, throughout
countless generations, of countless forefathers and foremothers. And
although such a man or woman may hark back to any one, or more, of the
traits of his or her innumerable forbears, he or she, nevertheless,
"breeds true" in the factors of sex and sex-characteristics.
Long and closely biologists have pondered these many and involved
problems. How is it, they inquire, that an embryo bred of two parents of
opposite sex develops the sex of one only of these? How is it that the
mother, who belongs to one sex only, produces--and produces in about
equal number--offspring of both? The phenomenon is expressed,
biologically, in the term, "sex-limited factor"--an incalculable
something in the embryo which limits its sex to the sex of one only of
its parents. But the "something," and the method of this sex-limitation
have remained enigmas.
Sex is regarded by the new Mendelian school of biologists as that which
is known as a "Mendelian factor." And to follow the argument to its
conclusions, a few simple words about the Mendelian theory of Heredity
are essential to those unacquainted therewith.
* * * * *
About forty years ago, a German monk, Mendel by name, was struck by the
facts that in his bed of edible peas certain plants grew tall, while
others remained dwarf; that the blossoms of certain plants were white
always, while those of others were always coloured. He made a number of
experiments in crossing the plants, with a view to discovering the law
of inheritance by way of its operation in hybrid varieties. Briefly, the
results of his experiments--which have since been repeated and confirmed
by many later observers--were as follows:
There are plants that are tall and can transmit only Tallness to
offspring. There are plants that are dwarf and can transmit only
Dwarfness to offspring. So too, there are plants of white blossom or of
coloured blossom that can transmit, respectively, only White or Coloured
blossoming to offspring.
When a Tall is crossed with a Dwarf plant, however, or a Coloured with a
White plant, strange to say, the hybrid offspring of this cross shows
_one_ only of these opposite traits, to the exclusion of the other. No
intermediate, or mixed, forms are produced.
Thus, a Tall crossed with a Dwarf produces only Talls. Plants of
Coloured flower crossed with those of White flower give only Coloured
flowering varieties. A yellow and a green-seeded cross produce only
yellow-seeded plants.
In the cross between plants of opposite traits, _one_ set of traits
appears thus, exclusively, in the hybrid offspring. These
traits--because they _dominate_ growth and development--Mendel styled
"Dominant." While those traits which are dominated by the other and
opposite traits and do not appear in offspring, he styled "Recessive."
On further breeding, a new and stranger thing happens, however. Because
when such hybrids--plants bred of parents that had borne, respectively,
"Dominant" and "Recessive" characteristics, but with the parental
Dominant traits so overpowering the Recessive traits of the other parent
that these latter are submerged and concealed--When these hybrids are
crossed with other hybrids like themselves, both the Dominant and the
Recessive traits of the original parents reappear in offspring. The tall
hybrids resulting from the cross between Tall and Dwarf plants, when
crossed with other tall hybrids of similar origin, produce both Tall and
Dwarf plants. So with Colour, and with the other so-called "Contrasted
Traits."
It becomes evident, therefore, that although the Dominant traits of
Tallness and Colour overpower in the growth and development of the
second generation of plants, the Recessive traits of Dwarfness and
Whiteness, these latter traits are _submerged_ only, and are neither
impaired in their values, nor destroyed. In the third generation, under
different conditions of mating, the original Recessive, and submerged,
traits re-appear, and reveal themselves in offspring-plants as the
Dwarfness or the Whiteness that had characterised their grandparents.
Mendel assumed that such hybrid plants--offspring of a Dominant and of a
Recessive parent--produce two varieties of sex-cells, or gametes, and
that one order of cells contain the Dominant traits of the Dominant
parent, while the other order contain the Recessive traits of the
Recessive parent.
But any individual sex-cell, or gamete, cannot (according to his view)
bear both Dominant and Recessive traits. The Dominant traits and the
Recessive traits of the respective parents he regarded as being
segregated, absolutely, in one or in the other set of sex-cells produced
by hybrid varieties. And of these, the cells bearing Dominant traits are
able to transmit Dominant traits only to offspring; while the cells
bearing Recessive traits transmit Recessive traits only to offspring.
II
Now, Biology shows that plants and living creatures develop from a
single microscopic cell, formed by the union of two half-cells, of which
each half was contributed by one of the two parents.
Clearly then, a hybrid plant is one that has sprung from the union of
two half-cells, one of which bore the Dominant traits of one parent,
while the other bore the Recessive traits of the other parent. But
because Dominant traits overpower Recessive traits in development, the
cross between a tall plant and a dwarf plant produces tall offspring
only--Tallness being a Dominant trait which overpowers the Recessive
trait of Dwarfness. So too, the cross between a plant bearing coloured
and a plant bearing white flowers produces offspring bearing coloured
flowers only--Colour being Dominant over the Recessive Trait of
Whiteness.
But because the Recessive traits of Dwarfness and of Whiteness were only
_overpowered_ in the plant-development, by the Dominant traits of
Tallness and Colour, but were neither lost nor impaired in stock, hybrid
plants that had shown only Dominant traits in growth and constitution,
produce, nevertheless, two sorts of sex-cells for plant-reproduction:
cells that bear the Recessive traits of the one parent, and cells that
bear the Dominant traits of the other parent. So that in the
fertilisation of one another by such hybrids, cells bearing Dominant
traits mate with other cells bearing Dominant traits, and produce plants
of pure Dominant type--Tall or Coloured, like one of the grandparents.
While cells bearing Recessive traits mate with other cells bearing
Recessive traits, and produce plants of pure Recessive type--Dwarf or
White, like the other grandparent.
It is seen, therefore, that in plants, when a cell bearing Dominant
traits mates with one bearing Recessive traits, the Dominant
characteristics so overpower the Recessive that these latter lie latent,
and concealed, in the resulting plant. But when a cell bearing Recessive
traits mates with another cell bearing Recessive traits, the resulting
plant (its growth and development not over-ridden now by the more
assertive Dominant traits) is able to develop its Recessive
characteristics.
* * * * *
These interesting and significant laws of plant-heredity and
constitution, discovered by Mendel in peas, have since been found by
many expert observers to hold true as regards other species of plants;
as too in poultry, in mice, and in rabbits, and moreover, in the
hereditary transmission of human characteristics.
In _Heredity and Variation_, Dr. Saleeby points out that in the mating
of a black with a white rabbit, some of the offspring will be black like
one parent, some white like the other, and some grey--a blend of the
colours of both parents.
In the last case, the _Dominant_ trait of Blackness, derived from one
rabbit-parent, blends in the fur of the rabbit-offspring with the
_Recessive_ trait of Whiteness, derived from the other rabbit-parent; a
grey rabbit resulting. But that the Contrasted Traits come to no more
than a temporary and partial compromise during the life of such a
rabbit-individual, without either of the traits losing its intrinsic
characteristic--Blackness and Whiteness, respectively--is proved by the
fact that these grey rabbit-offspring, on further breeding, produce not
_grey_ rabbits, but black rabbits and white rabbits; proving that the
Black trait and the White trait in them remained distinct and
segregated, neither altering its character in the least degree.
It is as though one should take a spoonful of black pepper and a
spoonful of white salt, and thoroughly mix them. A drab
"pepper-and-salt" mixture will result. But neither pepper nor salt will
have changed its colour or its properties one iota. Could they be
separated out again, each would be precisely as it had been before
mixing. So it is with the Dominant and the Recessive traits in living
organisms. They commingle intimately, but each retains its original and
intrinsic quality.
All the diverse and beautiful varieties of vegetation and the loveliness
of flowers, in form and colour, result from multiple associations in
hybrid-plants, of those which are known as the "Contrasted Traits" of
parent-stock.
III
The lay reader need not perplex himself with the problems and phenomena
of Mendelism.
All he requires to remember are its three leading principles. Firstly,
that in the world of Life, plant and animal, living attributes are
divided into two contrasting orders. Secondly, that of these two orders
of so-called "Contrasted Traits" ("Contrasting Traits" would be a fitter
phrase), the two groups are as absolute and opposite in character and in
significance as are the _plus_ and the _minus_ signs of Algebra, the
Positive and the Negative potentials of Electricity, the conditions of
Light and Darkness, of Blackness and Whiteness, of Heat and Cold.
Thirdly, that the Dominant order of traits are paramount over and
extinguish the Recessive order of traits.
To sustain her equilibrium by a counterpoise of dual and contrary
factors, physical and vital, Nature must preserve these factors absolute
and unchangeable as the constitution and the opposite attraction of The
Poles. But in order to produce her countless progressive variations of
form and attribute, physical and vital, she assembles these contrary
factors in countless progressively complex combinations, co-operations
and correlations.
It is conceivable, therefore, that the infinite gradations and
variations of form and attribute found in the world of living creatures
are, as in the world of plants, phenomena of the ever further
differentiation and more complex combination, in the hybrid offspring of
two parents, of two orders of Contrasting Traits, transmitted by the
respective parents.
In all their multiple associations and diverse developments, however,
the two Sets of Traits remain unchanged, precisely as do the individual
elements of chemical combinations. Variations in species result,
accordingly, not from change in the essential traits, but from changes
in the modes and the degrees of the commingling of these in organisms;
and in the modes and degrees of their ever more complex associations in
such.
Tallness, being an impulse toward extension, can never be Dwarfness,
which is an impulse toward contraction. Black can never be White. Square
can never be Round. Yet two opposite traits, both influencing
development, may come to a mean, or poise, in an individual organism; as
is seen in the grey offspring of a black rabbit mated with a white
rabbit. But it is a _counterpoise_ merely of contrary factors. The
traits of Blackness and Whiteness remain absolute and unalterable.
If now, the reader has grasped these leading principles of
Plant-biology, he is in a position to follow the new application of them
to Human Biology which I now venture to present.
Without going into details of physiology, it may be stated that the
principles of reproduction are so identical in plants and living
creatures as wholly to justify argument from one to the other. The only
differences are in degrees of structural complexity as organisms rise
higher in the scale of development, and demand, accordingly, more
complex organs and functions for the more perfect manifestation of their
characteristics; as also for the transmission of these to offspring. It
may be repeated, however, that Mendelian law is found to hold good in
humans, both in the hereditary transmission of normal characteristics
and in the hereditary transmission of the abnormal traits of disease and
degeneracy.
Increasing complexities, structural and functional, are indispensable to
the presentment of the attributes of the higher species, Man. But such
complexities are, nevertheless, continuous with and have sprung out of
the simplicities of lower and rudimentary organisms, precisely as the
branches and leaves and flowers of a plant are continuous with and have
sprung out of its roots. A vital and important biological detail (to be
considered later) is that plants are not, as living creatures are,
differentiated into a right and a left-side, identical in construction.
Another is that plants are self-fertilising.
With the lower animals, plural births are the rule. And in these, the
still crude and imperfect differentiations of the Contrasting Traits
allow of piebald and other modes of chequered colour and amorphous
construction.
The higher the organism, the more complex are the biological
requirements for its pre-natal development, as for its post-natal
nurture. The functions of Parenthood, both physiological and
psychological, are always evolving to higher and more complex issues,
therefore, as the species to be reproduced and nurtured becomes more
complex. In human births, single offspring is the normal. Twin births
are comparatively rare. And that these are abnormal is shown by twins
being below the average always in health or in faculty; usually in both.
IV
As already mentioned, Sex is regarded by the large and ever-increasing
order of the adherents of Mendel as a "Mendelian factor." But in
applying Mendelian truth to humans, I venture to think the applications
have not been carried to their ultimate and most momentous conclusions.
Because, given the keynote to the Principle of Duality in the phenomenon
of the Contrasting Traits found manifesting in plant-heredity and
constitution, the duality of the Human Sexes, with their respective
orders of Contrasting characteristics, suggests itself as being
analogous.
Human attributes, physical and mental, are seen, like those of plants,
to group themselves into two distinct categories, the Male and the
Female sex-characteristics, primary and secondary. And these, though
wholly contrary in nature and in trend, are found--precisely as occurs
in plants--linked together in the hybrid offspring of the two parents
from whom they were, respectively, derived; blending in a temporal
unity, but remaining, nevertheless, unchanged in their essential
differences; coming to means and counterpoises in individual
organisations, yet nevertheless preserved distinct and unalloyed in
these, as is shown by their emergence, unaltered, in offspring of
opposite sexes.
As a hybrid plant is the product of two parents characterised by
opposite traits--Tallness and Dwarfness, for example--so, I submit, a
human creature is the hybrid offspring of two parents characterised by
opposite traits--Maleness and Femaleness, with the Sex-traits
differentiating one sex from the other.
And at once a solution of the many baffling presentments and problems of
Sex presents itself--of the enigma of man with Woman potential in him,
of woman with Man potential in her; a key to the mysterious Duality of
human biology and psychology, with its conflict of battling impulses,
its harmonies of blending attributes, its innumerable and diverse
developments in proportions, in means, in extremes; in normalities,
eccentricities, deviations and reversions. And the analogy between the
two orders of Traits--in Plant-life at the lower end of the scale of
species, and in Human life and psychology at the higher end--suggests
that the ever-increasing complexity of organisation and faculty which
has characterised Evolutionary Progress, has had for aim, as it has had
for method, the ever further differentiation and more perfect
segregation, but, nevertheless, the ever closer and more intricate
association of the contrary factors of Maleness and Femaleness.
In the lower organisms--plant and animal--the two groups of Traits are
but crudely differentiated as characteristics distinguishing one sex
from the other. In such lower organisms, Sex-development is merely
rudimentary; the first foreshadowings in Life of two intrinsic orders of
Essential Attribute, the progressive evolution whereof reveals two
contrary trends in physiological and psychical inherences.
Like Light and Darkness, Heat and Cold, Sex is a phenomenon of Dual
states which manifest by way of relativity. Without Maleness, Femaleness
has no significance--no existence, in fact. And the converse. And in the
lower and rudimentary forms of existence, in proportion to their degrees
of undevelopment, the dual states of Sex are but faintly defined. The
very lowly forms are bi-sexual and self-fertilising. While the first and
simplest mode of reproduction is by cell-division merely; the principle
of Sex, with its dual factors, functioning, but not yet differentiated
into dual forms.
The evolution of Species and the evolution of Sex have been so
absolutely co-incident in biological progress, indeed, that we are
forced to perceive them as cause and effect; or, rather, as one and the
same thing. And the evolution of Sex has meant, of course, the ever
further divergence and the more complex specialisation, in form and in
function, of the characteristics of the one sex from those of the other.
V
On still closer consideration, it appears, moreover, that the evolution
of Sex has meant pre-eminently the evolution of the _female_ sex--the
slow and gradual emergence and development, in species, of female
characteristics, as, in course of Evolution, these have freed themselves
and have risen ever further into evidence from long subjection by the
stronger, fiercer, more assertive--in a word, the Dominant--traits of
the male.
(A conclusion as singularly interesting, I think, as it is instructive,
in view of modern Feminist doctrine and aims, which make, not for the
culture and the ever further evolutionary development of the
Woman-traits in woman, but, on the contrary, for a reversion to earlier
cruder states of the subjection in her of her Woman-traits by those male
Dominant ones, which, as the hybrid offspring of a male and of a female
parent, every female creature inherits from her father, together with
the Woman-traits she inherits from her mother. There is seen here the
irony that woman has, by long ages of biological development, released
herself from sociological subjection by the male, only voluntarily to
set the Woman in herself in far worse psychological subjection to the
male in herself.)
In the new and profoundly interesting light thrown by Mendel on some
previously unsolved problems of heredity, the reason for the long
subjection of woman, biological and sociological, becomes clear.
Because, given the key-notes of Tallness and Colour as Dominant traits,
one identifies these, at once, as traits of Maleness; the greater
stature of male creatures and the richer colour of their fur and plumage
in the lower species pointing unmistakably thereto. Dwarfness (or lesser
stature) and Whiteness (or lesser colour) are Recessive, and are
obviously Female traits. The plant of Dominant type, though still
bi-sexual, is making for a male _genus_; the Recessive type is making
for a Female _genus_. White creatures are so feminine in general effect
that it seems an anomaly when they are males. The converse is true of
black creatures. The black horse is stubborn and restive; the white,
gentle and submissive.
White poultry are prolific in egg-production; white cattle are good
milkers--a female characteristic. Jersey cows are both small in size and
pale of colour.
The male sex stands presumably for Dominance. And his positive, or
objective, traits overpowering the negative, or subjective, traits of
Recessiveness, prevail accordingly in early biological development.
The female sex stands for Recessiveness. Her less assertive traits yield
and recede into the background before those of the Dominant male. In
stature, in strength, and in colour, and in the allied mental
attributes, he holds the foreground in form and in function. The reason
being that his rôle in Life is adaptation to environment.
The male, therefore, in his masculine rôle of Adaptation, with his
Dominant traits making fiercely for the survival and for the ever
further development of physical fitness--until physical fitness, or
Adaptation, had attained due degrees of ascendancy--was long lord of
Creation; the female, his vassal. And this not only in life and in
action, but too in the personal characteristics of both sexes. During
æons before the Recessive female-traits were able to come into evidence
as definite traits, they functioned as negations, merely; submerged and
over-ridden in all female creatures by the Dominant male-traits they had
inherited from their sires.
Primal physical development may be said, thus, to have derived its first
impulse from those fierce and fighting male-proclivities which
characterised it in the epoch of that early savage struggle with
environment whence Species emerged. Only with further evolutionary
progress, do the female traits manifest as personal characteristics,
secure survival, and find increasing exercise and sway.
The tigress is only less fierce, less strong, and less savage than the
tiger. Primal woman was only less fierce, less strong, and less savage
than the male. It is only, indeed, in the maternal function and relation
that the female traits of both tigress and primal woman awake, and find
justification, impulse, and scope for development. And while the
material progress which has led to modern Civilisation resulted from
Adaptation to, and of, environment, and derived its impulse from the
male proclivities of strength, assertiveness and intelligence, the moral
progress thereof may be said to have derived its impulse from the
evolution of the female sex-characteristics. Because the evolution of
Woman-traits has meant the ever further tempering and counterpoising of
the fiercely active and aggressive male propensities, by the more
passive and self-surrendering qualities of the female.
Judging the respective characteristics of the sexes by their
widely-differing rôles in the most important of their co-operative
living functions, the parental one--the sole function wherein the sexes
of lower organisation co-operate, indeed--the respective attributes of
Dominance and Recessiveness manifest clearly in these. The province of
the male being to fight for mate and young, providing food, defending
life--in order to fit him for this struggle for racial survival, his
traits of strength and stature remain long paramount, alike in
development and function, over those of the female, as regards his own
organisation and that of his offspring, both male and female. The
province of the female being to surrender her powers to the nurture of
offspring before birth, and, after birth, mildly to suckle and to tend
its helplessness, Nature equips her to these ends; inhibiting, or
negativing, strength and fierceness in her by the traits of
Recessiveness.
Tigress or savage woman, her struggle with the rough conditions of
primal existence is only less fierce and less strenuous than her mate's.
It demands the positive male-qualities (which manifest first in stature,
strength and pugnacity) only less in degree than does his, therefore.
The negative female qualities which, manifesting first in passivity and
surrender, detract from her fierceness and activity, would have made for
extinction of species had they not been defended by those of her
fighting mate, as too by the male-traits she herself had inherited from
her fighting father. They could only evolve, accordingly, precisely in
proportion as they were sheltered behind the male dominant powers. The
tiger shelters his tigress only during her maternal phases, however. Her
cubs brought forth, suckled, reared, and thrust into the jungle to fend
for themselves, she must fight her own battles for food and existence.
And her brief maternal phases being all too short for more than the
scantest development of female traits--which derive their fullest
impulse in their exercise as mother-traits--she remains a tigress
merely, and produces tiger offspring merely, because only tigerishness
secures survival in her domain of life and attribute.
With the further advance of progressing species, savage woman has
evolved from savage brute to savage woman by way of such increasing
shelter and protection by her Dominant mate as have permitted the slow
and gradual evolution of the Recessive Woman-traits in her; and thereby
the evolution of the Woman-sex. Her maternal phases and the unfitnesses
of these become ever more prolonged and incapacitating; her offspring
demands ever longer periods of suckling, devotion and care, as both she
and it rise higher in the scale of organisation. Thus, Sex has evolved
in the male by response to the ever-increasing claims upon him, by the
female and by offspring, of his traits of protective chivalry and
intelligent effort. And Sex has evolved in the female by response to the
ever-increasing claims by offspring upon her, of her traits of devotion
and ministry.
The evolution of the Woman-attributes has been rendered possible only by
that protection accorded by the male to the female as the due of her
maternal unfitnesses; securing thus for her and for offspring a more
privileged and kindlier environment. Environment which, evoking less of
fight and physical stress, enabled her inherent milder,
self-surrendering Recessive traits to emerge, to unfold, and to function
increasingly in life and heredity.
And in the degree of her advancing evolution, the male evolved. Because,
just as in her earlier hybrid constitution, the Dominant male-traits she
had inherited from her father, submerging the Recessive female-traits
she had inherited from her mother, made her, for long æons, more male
than she was female, so now, with their progressive evolution, the
Recessive female-traits not only made _her_ ever more woman, but,
transmitted in ever fuller measure to her sons, increasingly tempered,
modified and humanised, the masculine fierceness and combativeness of
these. Whereby were substituted arts of peace and civilisation for those
of war.
Thus, with advancing Evolution, the female sex-characteristics have
engendered, in both sexes, qualities of quietism and subordination, to
temper those of force and aggression; amenities of gentleness,
forbearance and affection, to soften assertiveness, turn the edge of
strife, and fructify intelligence. Thus, human civilisation has been
fostered and furthered.
In the hybrid creature that every man and woman is, are grouped two sets
of Contrasting Traits, or Sex-characteristics: traits Dominant, or male,
and traits Recessive, or female. And in the complex human hybrid, these
traits, ever increasing in complexity of constitution and further
diverging in trend, are associated in ever more close and complex poise
and counterpoise as both become more intensified and intelligised.
Man is a hybrid in whom the male Dominant traits derived from his father
prevail in impulse and development over the female Recessive traits
derived from his mother. Woman is a hybrid in whom the maternal
Recessive traits prevail in impulse and development over the male
Dominant traits she has inherited from her father.
The Woman-traits (which, as said, reach their highest culmination in
_mother_-traits), become in man _paternal_ traits; modified
mother-instincts which move him not only to love, in addition to
providing for and protecting offspring, but, transfiguring all his other
characteristics, move him to philanthropy, amity, tolerance and altruism
in his dealings with his fellow-creatures.
CHAPTER IV
ONE SIDE OF BODY IS MALE, THE OTHER SIDE IS FEMALE
"Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine,
Your heart anticipate my heart,
You must be just before, in fine,
See and make me see, for your part,
New depths of the Divine!"
_Robert Browning._
I
On further applying the Principle of Duality, as operating in
organisation and heredity, strangely interesting and significant
developments appear.
Because, with the ever further evolution of Form and Faculty as
organisms have risen higher in the scale of life, the bodies of living
creatures are seen to have become further differentiated into two sides;
a right and a left. Anatomically, these two sides appear identical in
structure and in function, although contrary in incidence to one
another. Each is incomplete and impotent without the other.
Nevertheless, paralysis and other diseases show that each is, as it
were, an entity totally distinct from the other. One side may be wholly
helpless and insensitive while its fellow remains sound and efficient.
Complementary and supplementary each to the other, both are, in a sense,
complete. Further and closer comparison of function shows, however, that
although they co-operate in action, they are by no means identical in
power or aptitude.
The right half of the body is, for both sexes, the active and executive
half; quicker and stronger, and in all ways more efficient on the plane
of physics.
The left half is, relatively, passive and inert, is _responsive_,
mainly, to the initiative and requirements of the right half, by which
its powers are overshadowed in every form of direct activity.
As with the two sides of the body, so it is with the two halves of the
brain, which are at the same time the agencies of mentality and the
centres for recording the sensations and for directing the movements of
the two sides of the body. The brain-half which controls the right side
is known as "the Leading half." It is the agent in concrete
intellection, as in physical activity.
While, so far as biologists and psychologists have been able to
discover, the other half of the brain is negative in function--a blank,
as regards concrete intelligence and nervous or muscular initiative. In
disease, it has sometimes been found to undertake, and to perform feebly
and imperfectly, sundry of the duties of its active "Leading" partner.
But inert and inadequate in muscular action, it is negative in
intellection. It has been observed, however, that patients in whom this
brain-half is diseased show signs of moral deterioration. Yet whatsoever
its functions--and the fact that it does not atrophy nor degenerate in
the marvellous structure and complexity which characterise
brain-constitution shows that it functions duly--its operations are
totally dissimilar to, and are, moreover, wholly overshadowed by those
of its active, intelligent partner.
Here again, as in the two sides of the body, appear, surely, the factors
of Dominance and Recessiveness--in other words of Maleness and
Femaleness; of strength and activity upon material planes, and of
inhibition upon these.
Developments which, being in full agreement with one another and with
others, suggest that the two orders of Sex-characteristics (derived from
parents of opposite sex) are centred, respectively, in the two sides of
the body, and in the two brain-hemispheres allied, respectively, with
these. One side of the body, with its allied brain-half, represents the
paternal inherences of the individual; the other, the maternal. If so,
the right side of the body, with its allied Leading, or Dominant,
brain-half is, clearly, of male inherence. While the left side, with its
allied Recessive, or Dormant, brain-half is of female inherence.
The inference is further supported by the fact that the stronger right
side is rather larger and more masculine in form; while left-side limbs
are in normal right-handed persons, more slender and shapely and
delicate--in a word more womanly--than are those of the right.
As regards the face, from one aspect both sides are complete, from
another aspect both are incomplete, without the other. And in
configuration and expression, the two sides of the face differ
appreciably; the left side being more psychical, emotional and
subtle--in a word again more womanly.
In most persons, the hands and ears and eyes of one side differ from
those of the other, both in form and in function. In some persons the
differences are considerable. It happens occasionally, indeed, that the
eye of one side resembles in colour the eyes of one parent, while the
opposite eye bears the colour of those of the other parent.
Strange to say, there are, moreover, in the human male, organs concerned
with the strictly female function of lactation.
Indication of primæval human hermaphrodites formed one of Darwin's
greatest puzzles, indeed. In his _Descent of Man_, the following passage
occurs:
"It has been known that in the vertebrate Kingdom one sex bears
rudiments of various accessory parts appertaining to the
reproductive system, which properly belong to the other sex....
Some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to
have been hermaphrodite, or androgynous."
It escaped him as it has escaped later biologists that Man, the highest
of the vertebrates, _is still androgynous_. And this inevitably so,
since, being of bi-sexual parentage, the sex-characteristics of both
parents must be present in him.
In _The Evolution of Sex_, Professors Geddes and Thomson state:
"Sometimes a fish is male on one side, female on the other, or male
anteriorly and female posteriorly.... Among invertebrates the same
has been occasionally observed, especially among butterflies, where
striking differences in the colouring of the wings on the two sides
have in some cases been found to correspond to an internal
co-existence of ovary and testes.... The prettiest cases of
superficial hermaphrodism occur among insects, especially among
moths and butterflies, where it often happens that the wings on one
side are those of the male, on the other, those of the female."
II
Despite the fact that Nature has evolved the complex human races from
the single-celled microscopic _amoeba_ ("Protoplasmic father of Man," as
science has styled this), there are those who regard it as another of
numerous blunders on the part of the Great Mother that the left side of
the body is a more or less passive and powerless member. Accordingly,
the doctrine of Ambidextry has arisen. With the result that its wiser
exponents have abandoned it. Because it has been found that children
trained on Ambidextrous lines develop neurotic symptoms. This occurs
even in cases in which children naturally left-handed are taught to use
the right hand, as is normal.
In a lecture given before The Child-Study Society in London, Mr. P. B.
Ballard, London County-Council Inspector of Schools, stated that
left-handed bowlers send down the ugliest balls, left-handed boxers deal
the most unexpected blows--blows that hurt terribly. To be left-handed,
it seemed, was to be not merely awkward, but to be wicked, moreover. Yet
any attempt to interfere with a child's natural habit is liable to make
him stammer. (The evil bent of left-handed persons has a special
significance in view of my hypothesis of the dissimilar mental functions
of the two brain-hemispheres. The term "sinister" expresses this bent.
The inference is that in such transposition of the normal functions of
the brain-halves, the tempering and humanising influence of the
Woman-half is counteracted.)
Of a group of 545 left-handed children, 1 per cent. of pure left-handers
stammered, against 4·3 per cent, of 399, in course of being taught to
use the right hand, Mr. Ballard further stated. In another group of 207,
the figures were 4·2 per cent, and 21·8 per cent. respectively. Six out
of ten left-handed children who had been taught to use the right hand
were practically cured of stammering after having been allowed to use
the left hand exclusively for eighteen months. There are twice as many
left-handed boys as left-handed girls; and stammering is twice as
prevalent among boys.
All of which indicates normal differences in function of the two sides
of the body--differences suggesting that, as I have surmised, each is
the site and the agency of a principle totally unlike that of the other.
III
Upon referring to Biology--on the processes whereof every development,
both physical and psychical, of living creatures rests--this curious
dual constitution of the body, together with the problems of dual
sex-transmission and inherency, become explicable.
And the solutions are at the same time so simple and inevitable as to be
the strongest possible confirmation of my thesis.
As already stated, living organisms, offspring of two parents, derive
half the source of their structure from one parent, half from the other.
All plants and living creatures evolve their organisation from a single
microscopic cell, precisely as Life itself evolved primarily, and has
developed out of the single-celled, microscopic _amoeba_. The
microscopic cell which develops into a living creature is composed thus
of two halves, or "gametes," to employ the scientific term. One half was
contributed by the father: the other, by the mother. The two have united
to form a whole cell. From such a cell (zygote), half male, half female,
the body of every living organism has sprung.
Now, although these two half-cells unite to form a whole cell, exchange
constituents, and appear to lose their identity each in the other, it
is, in the face of the strange dual constitution of the body, difficult
to doubt that each half actually retains its identity and
sex-inherences, and develops along its own lines (albeit in close
correlation with the other), throughout all the marvellous, intricate,
and complex processes of embryological existence, during which the
zygote is evolving into a living creature, capable of separate and
individual life. And the inherences of these two halves are represented,
at birth, in the respective sides of the body; each being, as it were, a
complete and perfect entity, although inseparably knit in one flesh to
its twin. And throughout all the further intricate and complex processes
whereby the creature comes to maturity, lives, reproduces its species,
and dies, each half preserves its individual inherence alike in
constitution and in function. And yet in the mystical unity of their
commingling duality, they are one flesh.
Each of the parental half-cells contained, marvellously, the potential
moiety of a living personality. But either, alone, would have been but
an incomplete and valueless thing, had it not become united with the
complementary half-cell required to complete it structurally, and to
engender and energise its potentialities. Nevertheless, throughout all
the immature and the mature phases of life, from conception to birth,
and from birth onward to death, the opposite sides of the body represent
normally the opposite sex-inherences of their respective parents. They
are, in humans, the Man and the Woman--two in one--that exist in every
living man and woman. They represent contrary principles; they perform
different functions; they engender and energise dissimilar processes.
One is the centre of the Male characteristics, Dominant upon the
material plane; the other, of the Female characteristics, Recessive
thereon.
Normality and health are the mean and balance, in the individual, of the
complementary and supplementary functions and processes of the opposite
sex-inherences of his, or her, body. Precisely as in the social economy
the complementary and supplementary rôles of men and women counterpoise
the aptitudes and determine the effectiveness of human life and action.
The left, Female-half of the body, with its allied half-brain,[1] is
inhibitive, and engenders the evolution and the preservation, physical
and mental, of The Type; sustaining health and vital power by way of the
female attributes of rest and conservation.
The right, Male half, with its allied half-brain, is executive, and
energises the development (Adaptation) of The Type in its relation to
Environment, and, disbursing and applying the vital resources, generates
and differentiates potential faculty in terms of living function.
IV
This hypothesis of the dual constitution and of dual functions of the
two-sided body supplies an explanation, equally simple and inevitable,
of the parental transmission of Sex. _Natura simplex est_, said Newton.
And Du Prel, "Nature is much more simple than we have any conception
of."
Because, as Biology shows, not only does each of the two parents
contribute to offspring, but there being both a right and a left
reproductive gland in members of both sexes, the contribution either
parent supplies must have been derived from one or other of these glands
in them. And if the two sides of the body are of different
sex-inherence, it is only logical to conclude that the contribution the
gland of one side makes will be of different sex-inherence from that of
the other.
Since all forms of Energy have two modes, potential (or latent) and
kinetic (or active), on the plane of physics, this must be true, of
course, of Vital Energy.
Life-energy must be present in all living bodies in the forms,
respectively, of _latent_ Vital Energy and _functioning_ Vital
Energy--energy conserved and available for functioning, and energy
expending itself in the living processes of mentality and action.
An individual is able to move his limbs by power of the _potential_
motion stored, or latent, in the muscle-cells of his limbs. Just as a
locomotive-engine is enabled to travel by power of the _potential_
motion stored in the steam generated in its boiler. And as in the
living organism, so in the engine, the mechanism and the processes that
engender in it the _potential motion_ of steam are wholly distinct from
those which convert this potential motion into _actual motion_.
One is able to think, by power of the _potential_ mentality stored, or
latent, in his brain-cells. For not only the vital processes which
sustain the life of the organism, as those too which enable it to
function in terms of living personality and action, but brain-power also
must exist in the dual forms, respectively, of _potential_ Faculty and
_functioning_ Faculty. So too, Reproductive power. In all of these
appear again the modes of Dominance and Recessiveness, of powers
_positive_ and _manifesting_, and of powers _negative_ and _latent_. And
since the female sex is characterised by traits of repose and
conservation, and the male sex by traits of action, the dual modes of
vital, muscular, cerebral and reproductive energy _in potential_, and of
vital, muscular, cerebral and reproductive energy _in course of
generating function_, range themselves inevitably on the two sides of
the living equation as Sex-characteristics differentiating the male
organisation from that of the female. Thus ranged, they characterise the
two sides of the body as representing, respectively, a right, male side
which is the central agency in function, and a left, female side, which
is the reservoir of the _potential_ of function.
If then the female mode of functioning is the Potential, or Recessive, a
mode of latency, it is to be inferred that the male traits every female
creature inherits from her father will, when incorporated in a body of
female prepotence, pass into the potential, or Recessive, mode; and will
thus become inhibited from developing as male-characteristics.
Nevertheless, this male potential will be preserved in that reproductive
gland which represents the paternal inherences in her, and will be
transmitted, as her contribution to male offspring, in the sex-cells
generated by this gland.
While the female inherences every male derives from his mother will, in
the presence of the Dominant male-characteristics he derives from his
father, retain their latent, or Recessive, mode; and will thus not
emerge as female characteristics. The female inherences will be
preserved, however, in that reproductive gland which represents the
maternal inherences in him; and will be transmitted as his contribution
to female offspring.
It will be seen thus that, as in hybrid plants, so in hybrid creatures
of both sexes, cells of two sexes are generated: in the male, cells
Dominant for maleness and cells Recessive for maleness--female that is;
in the female, Recessive cells, prepotent for femaleness, and Dominant,
or male, cells.
And of these, the Dominant male sex-cells contributed by the male
parent, mating with the Dominant, or male, sex-cells contributed by the
female parent, male offspring results. While the Recessive female
sex-cells contributed by the female parent, mating with the Recessive,
or female, sex-cells contributed by the male parent, female offspring
results.
Furthermore, Dominance being paramount in development, it must be from
the Dominant inherence imparted by residence in a male organisation to
the potential, or Recessive, female Germ-Plasm that the latter derives
the new developmental impulse it transmits to sex-cells. While
Recessiveness being Life and Faculty in the potential mode, it must be
from the Recessive inherence engendered in the Dominant male Germ-Plasm,
by residence in a female organisation, that its Dominance, passing into
latency, derives a new potential of further evolutionary impetus.
The differentiation of living creatures into two sexes, therefore, of
bodies into two sides, of brains into two halves, and of Germ-Plasm into
two reproductive glands, would seem to have had for object the ever
further specialisation and segregation in the individual, for purposes
alike of constitutional organisation and of the evolution of Faculty and
Reproduction, of the two Orders of Contrasting Traits, which I have
assumed to be Maleness and Femaleness, respectively.
From this view-point, the female Sex and Sex-traits are Recessive, or
Potential, always, on the material plane, and manifest increasingly
thereon only by way of ever more complex alliances with male-traits;
which, being positive on the concrete plane, equip the female inherences
for function thereon. Femaleness, or Recessiveness, on its side,
however--being Life-Energy in the potential--is all the while
engendering new potence for Dominance to transform into active, or
functioning, power. While although negative, it is equally potent, on
_its_ side of the equation, to alter the values and manifestations of
Dominance. Just as negative electricity inhibits the positive and
destructive forces of positive electricity, although it does not, of
itself, _manifest directly_.
The Dominant traits of Tallness and Strength, for example, are direct
and _positive_ factors in physical development. Dwarfness and Weakness
are indirect and _negative_ factors therein. Nevertheless, degrees of
Dwarfness or of Weakness must proportionally reduce and modify the
tallness of Tallness or the power of Strength.
But that Recessiveness is not a _minus_ sign merely, as algebraically
understood--but is an essential potence on another, and a psychical
plane, is shown by the lesser height of woman rendering itself as a
Grace; her lesser strength appearing in the new virtue of Gentleness.
That the female provides, for fertilisation, only a single sex-cell,
from the reproductive gland of one or other side, while the male
provides multiple and commingled cells from both sides, supports the
view that sex-cells derived from one side are of opposite sex-inherence
to those from the other side. Otherwise, why two reproductive glands?
The author of _The Causation of Sex_ adduces evidence showing not only
that the two glands are of opposite sex-inherence, but, moreover, that
normally they function alternately; so that now a cell of one, now, of
the other sex, is produced. It is likely, however, that function is
seldom so mechanical, but that personal constitution or nurture modifies
its operations.
That the male cells are multiple in number points to such a struggle of
survival-fitness as ever characterises the more strenuous male destiny.
Not, perhaps, the fittest as regards intrinsic superiority, but that
most compatible with the requirements of the Queen-cell is selected for
mate. Should the Queen-cell be of inferior standard, therefore, then (as
happens in life) not the noblest of type, but that most adapted to
environment secures racial survival.
So that here again, evolutionary racial advance may derive its impulse
from the Female factor.
A singular phenomenon, recorded by the biologist, Rörig, and one which
materially supports my argument, is that disease of the ovaries of a
female deer will cause _male_ antlers to develop in her. Proving a male
organism concealed, or held Recessive, in her, by power of her female
sex-organs normally to inhibit the development of her inherited
male-traits. A strange feature of this abnormal occurrence is that
disease of _one_ ovary only causes antlers to develop on _one_ side
only--and this on the side opposite to that of the diseased gland.
On the other hand, castration of male sheep of the Merino breed (only
the males of which are horned) occasions hornlessness.
V
Male traits being paramount on the plane of concrete function, although
they exist (normally) in Recessive form in the female, it is from the
male inherence of her active right side and its allied brain-half that
she derives her concrete powers alike of body and of brain.
It is obvious, therefore, that when abnormally stimulated by undue
exercise, such male-traits may develop into abnormal dominance.
The left arm of woman is essentially the woman-member. In its
half-passive action of supporting her infant for hours together, it is
stronger for this maternal ministration than is the more active and
doughty right arm of the male. Her left hand is more delicate of form,
gentler and more soothing of motion than her right hand is. It is the
hand she caresses with. While for direct, strong action--masculine
action, that is--the paternal right half of her is dominant, as in the
male. And although in our present-day stages of Evolution, the Recessive
Woman-traits have emerged as definite characteristics, emancipating
themselves from subjection by the Dominant male-traits, it must be
remembered that their impulse and their powers are yet but rudimentary.
Woman is still more male than she is female; her methods being more
masculine still than they are womanly. And this in the degree of her
cruder racial stock, or of the harder conditions (natural or artificial)
of the environment in which she finds herself, demanding more of
masculine proclivity in her--of physical activity and mental
assertiveness--than of her intrinsic Woman-qualities of emotion and
ministry.
Civilisation, foreshadowing evolutionary ideals, discountenances, the
fighting female. Nevertheless, the cruder female _fights_ still with her
male right arm, and the more cultured female, with tongue and tactics.
The intrinsic Woman-qualities, whereof Christianity is the gospel, are
yet in their infancy of development; are yet more ideals for which we
are shaping and waiting than they are realised and abiding facts.
Even their own babes are not secure from the instinct of blows inherent
in the male-muscles of their mothers' right arms, when these are
restrained neither by a woman's tenderness nor by a man's chivalry.
Girl-babies, save those of the rarer higher types, beat their mothers
and nurses only rather less frequently and less fiercely than boy-babies
do.
Later in their life-history, that new impulse to the evolution of the
Woman-traits which characterises their development to womanhood,
normally negatives and further tempers in girls the male instincts of
fight and of sport. But many of our modern amazons, brought up like
boys, are more male than are their brothers. The male fighting-instinct
which moved man to invent a club (destructive) has become so tempered by
the increasingly potent Woman-traits in him that, save when angry or at
war, he is content to turn his club into a golf-stick, a cricket bat, or
tennis racquet; his sword into a plough-share. Whereas, on the contrary,
the Woman-traits which moved woman to invent the needle (constructive)
are becoming so over-ridden by the male in her that modern woman,
artificially masculinised, abhors the needle, and is almost as much
dominated as the other sex is by the male instinct for a weapon in the
hand.
The class, Vertebrates, would seem to represent an adaptation to
environment typically Male; earlier than and contrary in trend to that
of the Mammalia, whereof the impulse was obviously Female.
Increasing vertebration was characterised by such a progressive
differentiation of Male from Female traits as progressively segregated
these in opposite sides of the body; with spinal column and spinal cord
for, respectively, physical and nervous central lines of demarcation.
Thus the Male traits were enabled more and more to detach themselves at
will from Female inhibition, and thereby increasingly to specialise and
exercise those powers of force and fierceness and activity by way of
which species became ever more individuated; aggressive, intelligent,
efficient, in terms of _Fitness_ for the struggle for survival.
Until that later evolution of female adaptation to _Unfitness_, in the
sacrificial function of Lactation, inhibiting and tempering the earlier
male trend, engendered the yet higher order of Mammalia.
(With that intuitive illumination inspiring speech, men and races
lacking in virility are contemptuously described as being
"invertebrate.")
According to this hypothesis, the paternal (and male) inherences of any
mother may be said to be transmitted to the grandson in the direct male
line of her heredity--an unbroken line of Maleness reaching back to its
amoebic origin. While the maternal (and female) inherences of any father
are transmitted, in the direct female line, to the grand-daughter--a
similar line of continuity. The Woman-sex and traits of the grandmother
remain thus for a generation dormant, or Recessive, in the father;
"skipping a generation," as the phrase is. Then, in the third
generation, they re-appear in the grand-daughter; by power of a maternal
contribution in which the female inherence is prepotent. While the
male-sex and traits of the grandfather remain dormant, or potential, in
the mother; likewise "skipping a generation." Then they emerge in the
grandson, by power of a male gamete evoking the inherent male in them.
VI
The attributes of the one sex invested thus in the other, although
normally submerged, form nevertheless a valuable endowment; supplying
supplementary and complementary factors to counterpoise, to energise,
and fructify the powers proper to the sex of the individual.
Man bears throughout life the Woman-potential his mother transmitted to
him. But it is not his to realise. He bears it in trust for his
daughters. He transmits it to his daughters, and in them this potential,
recovering its woman-impulse, evolves to a further degree of
woman-power. The like with mothers and sons.
All of which is supported by the Mendelian doctrine that the mother
transmits "Femaleness" as a Dominant factor to her daughters and as a
Recessive factor to her sons.
But the method whereby this is achieved has remained a mystery.
Professor Punnett says with regard to the phenomenon:
"The mother transmits to her daughter the dominant faculty of
femaleness, but to balance this, as it were, she transmits to her
sons another quality which her daughters do not receive ... among
human families, in respect to particular qualities, the sons tend
to resemble their mothers more than their daughters do."
A striking illustration of such transmission by mother to son of a
paternally-derived abnormal inherence _which she herself does not
develop_, is found in so-called "bleeders"; persons who suffer from the
disease, hæmophilia. The daughters of a "bleeder" father show no symptom
at all of the affliction, but they, nevertheless, pass on to their sons
this male heritage of the grandfather.
There are numerous other examples of traits and diseases thus "skipping
a generation"--in other words, of lying dormant, or potential, merely;
overshadowed in the constitution and psychology of the sex to which they
do not rightly belong, but developing in a succeeding generation in
offspring of that sex whereof they are a natural trait, or (so to speak)
a natural defect.
Since the woman-half she contributes to their hybrid constitution
engenders the potential of their living processes, the mother may be
regarded as still mothering her children throughout development and
maturity, and to the end of their natural term. Accounting for that
mystical sympathy between mother and child which intuitively informs her
of fatalities occurring to absent sons and daughters--but to sons
pre-eminently. Marvellously, they remain one living flesh so long as
life persists.
During the War, mothers at a distance have known by an intuitive flash,
and have told of the death of sons cut down in battle. One mother
described the sensation she experienced as being precisely _as though
one side of her body had been suddenly torn away_. So too, mothers whose
infants have died during childbirth or shortly after, describe as
persisting for months subsequently a sense as though part of them were
dead.
The father too must function in the hybrid living constitution. With the
immense difference, however, that his part therein is a factor of the
development of traits, not of the mystical functioning of Life. A
notable feature of this paternal heritage is that in women at middle-age
(when the wane of reproductive power releases vital potential from
maternal investments) not only may masculine physical traits emerge, but
there may develop in them notable brain-capacities inherited from the
father. Capacities inherent in them previously, but long inhibited in
action by the normal female brain-Recessiveness.
VII
Every higher evolutionary differentiation results inevitably not only in
progressive mutations in the traits of species, but, as well, in
variations of the reproductive processes of such. When _defects_,
physical or mental, are not reproduced in later generations true to
Mendelian law, however, this is not abnormal, but is beautifully normal.
Normality requires that defect--which is a deviation from The
Normal--shall not be transmitted in any ratio whatsoever, but shall be
corrected in a succeeding generation.
Moreover, when we realise the number and the complexities of human
traits, all struggling to keep The Law, it is only to be expected that
any single characteristic owing to its sex-inherence, may pass into the
potential or Recessive, mode, and may thus vanish for a generation.
Further, by the law of compensation, any trait or determinant, although
itself Dominant, may be dwarfed and submerged by some other Dominant
trait more assertive than itself.
Suppose a father normally larger and stronger than the normally shorter
and weaker mother: Stature and strength being both Dominant and
masculine traits, the traits of such a father, dominating the
development of his sons, should so over-ride the traits of lesser
strength and stature of the mother (in whom strength and stature are
normally Recessive) that his sons will be tall and broad and strong, and
mentally virile. On the other hand, the mother's traits, prepotent in
the development of daughters, will inhibit in these and diminish the
strength and stature of their paternal inherences. Thus, the woman of
pure Recessive (the essential woman) type is smaller, more delicately
organised, and weaker than the male.
By such means, the normal of the relative strength, stature, and mental
qualifications of the sexes is preserved; the specialised
characteristics of both ever further diverging in trend, while at the
same time intensifying their intrinsic attributes.
Suppose, however, a mother who deviates from the normal in having
developed along masculine lines, and who is, accordingly, tall or strong
or mentally virile: Far from supplementing, in her sons, the father's
traits of strength and stature, her sons will be more or less emasculate
in mind or body, or in both. Strength and stature and virile mentality
not being normal to her, these can only have emerged in her and can only
have been exercised by her at cost of the masculine potential she bore
in trust for male offspring. A woman who wins golf or hockey-matches may
be said therefore to energise her muscles with the potential manhood of
possible sons. With their potential existence indeed, since
over-strenuous pursuits may sterilise women absolutely as regards male
offspring.
Thus it is that muscular and otherwise masculine women produce weakling
males. (Giant women--female-Dominants--are incapable of reproduction.)
Tall mothers may produce tall sons, by transmitting to them the single
trait of tallness of the maternal grandfather. But since tallness in
woman is development along masculine lines, and detracts from her
maternal power, the tall son in such case is likely to be defective in
other manly traits. Men are of greater height than women, mainly in
consequence of greater length of leg. The power expended in the male in
length of limb is absorbed in the female into complex pelvic
developments, wherein it is stored as Reproductive potential.
The power thus stored in latency reveals itself in the amazing
evolution, as regards capacity and muscular equipment, by way of which
the maternal _uterus_ so develops during pregnancy as to enable it to
cradle an infant of 9 or 10 lbs. weight, and to deliver this by output
of immense energy--a marvel of biological function and mechanism.
Since the male trait of Tallness may be transmitted by woman from her
father to her son, without manifesting in herself, it is obviously waste
of power for her to develop a characteristic she needs neither for
personal nor for hereditary purposes. Whereas, by further evolving her
own woman-traits of suppleness and grace, she contributes new factors to
those of the male. And so with all the other sex-characteristics.
Mr. Horace G. Regnart, M.A., the well-known breeder of pedigree stock,
states that a bull of marked _masculine_ characteristics sires daughters
of marked _feminine_ characteristics. While the _feminine_ cow bears
sons of strongly _masculine_ type. On the other hand, the daughters of a
"steery" bull (a bull of de-sexed type) are themselves defective in
female characteristics, and bear sons defective in male characteristics.
VIII
Clearly and fully defined, accordingly, as Sex-characteristics are in
proportion as the individual is of high and normal organisation,
obtrusions in the one sex of the traits of the other are as much
stigmata of abnormality as are cleft-palate, webbed feet, or other
deviations from the normal. Because they are reversions to lower types
of organisation in which sex was less highly differentiated than is the
normal of to-day.
Although, with progressive evolution, the Sex-traits are spun ever finer
and finer, and are ever more subtly and inextricably interwoven with
those of the other, normally the threads run true and distinct as do the
threads of warp and woof in textile fabric.
The ever finer spinning of the threads secures an ever closer, subtler
interweaving. Whereby the fabric of human organisation, of character and
Faculty, becomes ever firmer yet more supple, ever stronger yet more
delicate, ever more intense and rich of colour, but nevertheless more
beautifully harmonised and subtilised by half-tones and complex
gradations.
This is the reason why the strongest and most virile men are the most
humane; the sternest are most tender; the greatest are most subtle. So
inextricably interwoven with their virile characteristics are the finer
spun Woman-potencies, as strangely and exquisitely to temper and
sensitise their Manhood's powers.
And it is why the tenderest, most womanly women are the noblest; the
gentlest are the most enduring; the wisest are the sweetest.
But no more than Black can be White, Acid, Alkaline, or the Straight
line a Circle, can Repose be Action, Sternness be Sweetness, Firmness be
Softness, Fierceness be Gentleness; Assertiveness, Selflessness;
Boldness, Modesty. Nevertheless, in the hybrid unfoldment of Contrasting
traits, Softness tempering Fierceness transforms it to Strength;
Sweetness tempering Sternness melts it to Mercy; Assertiveness
reinforcing Selflessness nerves it to Devotion; Firmness preserves
Softness from lapsing to Weakness; Altruism, inspiring Chivalry,
transfigures it to Heroism. But that Fierceness and Strength, Sweetness
and Selflessness, have only intensified as, with further evolution, they
have extended further into Life and Consciousness, is shown when they
tear themselves asunder from their counterpoising attributes. Fierceness
is seen then to be more fierce in complex man--because fierce in so many
more and deeper issues of Life and Consciousness--than is the fierceness
of the gorilla, which manifests largely in muscular savagery; champing
of jaws, and beating on its breast as on a drum.
So too, the emotion of complex woman is more deeply rooted in her, and
is more intense, than is the instinctive emotionalism of the savage
woman which expresses itself mainly in reflex movements and hysterical
outcries.
* * * * *
Thus down the ages, man, by way of Fatherhood, has endowed woman ever
further with his developing traits of strength and intelligence. Woman,
by way of Motherhood, has endowed man with an ever fuller heritage of
her attributes of selflessness and intuition.
So these poor souls--the Man and the Woman in all men and women--have
climbed the steep ascent together, hand in hand, toward the Light.
Without the other, neither could have come. So tragically drear and
solitary would have been the pilgrimage, save for the spiritual converse
of that mystical comrade.
Only by way of this psychical comradeship, which solaces the one sex by
the inspiration of the other, do men and women win through the
terrestrial travail of the human destiny.
The mystical Man (who is her father in her) when woman would falter and
fail in the fight, whispers, "Courage, dear Girl, go on!"
The mystical Woman (who is his mother in him) goes with her son into the
murk and struggle of temptation, holding her lamp of The Good and The
True and The Beautiful before his blinding eyes.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Owing to an interchange of nervous strands, the right half of the
brain controls the left half of the body; and the converse. Structural
details which need not be considered here, but which have clearly for
purpose the closer and more complex association and co-ordination of the
Contrasting Traits of the two sides of the body.
CHAPTER V
MASCULINE MOTHERS PRODUCE EMASCULATE SONS BY MISAPPROPRIATING THE
LIFE-POTENTIAL OF MALE OFFSPRING
"_The truth, when it is discovered, is what every one has known._"
I
Mendel found that the hybrid plants resulting from his cross-breedings
of Dominants with Recessives produced, when mated with similar hybrids,
sex-cells of pure Dominant and sex-cells of pure Recessive types, and,
moreover, a proportion of sex-cells of mixed type, corresponding to the
grey rabbit-offspring of a black rabbit that has mated with a white.
So too, are found among humans, four types of men and women such as
might be expected under my application of Mendelian doctrine:
_Homozygotes_ for Traits, or pure typical men and women--Dominant males
and Recessive females, respectively; and _Heterozygotes_ for Traits, or
mixed types--Dominant females and Recessive males.
Of the pure Masculine type, are men who are wholly male in body, mind
and bent; active, energetic, enterprising; pioneers of material
progress; State-builders, city-builders, trade-builders, financiers,
explorers, soldiers, men of affairs. Of the Mixed type, are men who,
while being virile of body and mind, possess nevertheless a greater
admixture of womanly quality than is strictly normal. These are the
artists, poets, writers, doctors, priests, philanthropists.
Among women also, are two kindred orders; the wholly womanly--pure
unalloyed types of natural woman, wife and mother, sister, friend; and
women who, while being wholly womanly too in attribute and trend,
possess, nevertheless, underlying manly faculties which give broader
scope and effectiveness to abstract and impersonal issues of their own
sex-characteristics. These are the artists and poets and writers who
present the Woman point of view. They are the Florence Nightingales, the
Charlotte Brontës, Mary Somervilles; the philanthropists, reformers,
born physicians, teachers, nurses, and so forth; whose part it is to
mother, befriend and inspire humanity at large rather than to minister
to individuals. Whose part it is, as well, to extend the tender,
purifying ethics of Woman and The Home ever further and more deeply into
public life, public work, and public administration.
Such men and women possess the characteristics of their own sex fully
differentiated, but tinctured and fructified by more than a normal
quotum of the characteristics of the other. They are quite normal,
however, and are wholly invaluable in their contribution to the world's
affairs. Admirably manly or womanly, they bear but little likeness to
the hereditarily-defective or to the artificially-manufactured
species--mannish women and womanish men. They deviate from the essential
Man and Woman types by degrees of overlapping in the higher mental
attributes. In all the main characteristics of Sex, physical, mental and
functional, they are completely men and women. The abnormal mixed types
are, on the contrary, more or less degenerate, structurally,
functionally and mentally. These persons of natural Mixed Types are
Nature's workers rather than the parents of her Races. The daily round
is too restricted for them. Their abilities and bent claim wider fields.
The home cannot contain them. It is too round to fit their angles. They
are hampered by its reciprocities, stifled by its personal atmosphere,
restive beneath its obligations. And not seldom they succeed in making
homes as uncomfortable for others as they themselves find such.
These Heterodox--of which mould Genius is--are indispensable to spur and
quicken human progress, while adding nothing to the personal evolution
of the Human Type. They advance the standards and the ethics of Humanity
by creating ideals in Art, in Literature, in Politics, in Reform and
Philanthropy. But only too often they fall short, in their own lives, of
the standards and ideals they establish for the world at large.
The Advance-guard of Faculty, they break new ground of Mind and Morale
for others to cultivate. Although they themselves frequently quarrel
with life, they make life in general greater and happier for their
fellows. If women, they possess much of the initiative and energy, the
intellect and chivalry of men. But they apply these to womanly ends. If
men, they possess much of the insight and sympathy, the altruism and
creativeness of women. But they devote these to manly achievements.
Herbert Spencer held that Genesis (or reproductive power) and
Individuation (or Self-development) exist in inverse ratio. Which is
because individuation _beyond the normal_ can only be achieved by
drawing upon the vital potential of offspring. Hence, these strong
individualities of Mixed Type--because reproductive power is diminished
in them--but seldom transmit their abilities to offspring. Genius is
frequently sterile. Otherwise, its children are of inferior calibre.
It is in imitation, doubtless, of the natural Mixed Types--which may be
described as a normal deviation from The Normal--that the cult of the
mannish woman is being cruelly and disastrously forced upon our
latter-day girls and women; resulting in wholly deplorable developments.
The woman of natural Mixed-type is essentially womanly in aim and bent.
She does womanly work with virile energy and masculine mental grip. But
she never (or seldom) assumes male proclivities or adopts male habits;
crazes to wear trousers, to ride astraddle, to smoke, spit, swear,
stride, talk slang, or shoot living sentient creatures. Nor does she
otherwise exchange the more highly-evolved and delicate morale and
manners of woman for those of the male. In Art, in Literature, in
Science; in Industry and Reform, her aims and work preserve the womanly
mode and outlook.
II
In consequence of doctrine which, for several generations, has trained
women to develop for their own uses the masculine potential belonging to
sons, many of our present-day boys and girls are seen actually to have
exchanged their natural sex-characteristics. Boys are born now, puny,
neurotic, and effeminate; while girls are strong and male and masterful.
And it is precisely in the families whereof the girls are strong and
male and masterful, that the boys are weakly and effeminate; the
degenerative lapse from The Normal expressing itself, in both sexes, in
terms of abnormal characteristics of the other sex.
That at thirteen, girls now-a-days are taller and heavier than boys of
the same age has been established by the Anthropometrical Committee of
the British Association.
Dr. J. J. Heslop, after carefully observing the health and the physical
growth of children in fourteen elementary schools belonging to the
Stretford (Lancashire) Education Authority, has published a striking
return of his investigations. The following table shows the average
height and weight at this age:
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| | Height. | Weight. |
+-----------------------+--------------------------+-----------------+
|St. Matthew's | Boys 4 ft. 7-3/4 in. | 5 st. 7-3/4 lb. |
| | Girls 4 ft. 9 in. | 5 st. 10-3/4 lb. |
|Cornbrook Park | Boys 4 ft. 8-1/2 in. | 6 st. 0 lb. |
| | Girls 4 ft. 10-1/3 in. | 6 st. 5-1/2 lb. |
|St. Anne's | Boys 4 ft. 7 in. | 5 st. 3-3/4 lb. |
| | Girls 4 ft. 9 in. | 5 st. 10-1/2 lb. |
|Trafford Park | Boys 4 ft. 7-3/4 in. | 5 st. 4 lb. |
| | Girls 4 ft. 9-1/2 in. | 5 st. 8-1/2 lb. |
|Gorse Hill | Boys 4 ft. 8-1/2 in. | 5 st. 10 lb. |
| | Girls 4 ft. 10 in. | 5 st. 11 lb. |
|Seymour Park | Boys 4 ft. 8-2/3 in. | 5 st. 0 lb. |
| | Girls 4 ft. 10 in. | 5 st. 11 lb. |
+-----------------------+-------------------------+------------------+
The most notable development among girls takes place between the
eleventh and thirteenth years.
The opposite bias in this abnormal substitution of alien sex-traits is
due presumably, in both sexes, to an antagonising and neutralising of
the qualities normal to the one sex by emergence of those of the other.
Thus, the boy is puny and emasculate because his impoverished maleness
is too feeble to dominate the Female traits inherent in him, as is
normal to males. The girl is big and crude and masterful because her
impoverished Womanliness is inadequate to inhibit and refine her
inherent Male traits.
The aims of Feminism are being realised in unforeseen developments.
Because in addition to extinguishing the most beautiful and inspiring
order of human qualities, this masculinising of women is burdening the
Race and deteriorating type by producing an ever-increasing number of
neurotic, emasculate men and boys.
III
The present-day Mortality-rate of boy-babies has become increasingly and
alarmingly high.
The mortality-rate of males is higher always than is that of females,
because of the greater hardships and dangers of men's pursuits. This is
one of the reasons why, although, normally, boys are born in greater
number (about 1050 to every 1000 girls) the female (pre-war) population
of England and Wales exceeded the male population by the huge majority
of 1,205,311.
But the excess of male over female infant-mortality has greatly
increased of late years. In 1860 it was only 9 per cent. In 1913 it had
leapt to the high figure of 23 per cent. And this diminishing vital
power of males begins before birth even, 180 boys being born prematurely
as compared with 145 girls. Of boys born, 7 die from inborn physical
defects, as compared with 6 girls. While, before the age of three
months, 4 boys die to every 3 girls. Among 1000 infants dying before
they are a year old, only 96 are girls, as compared with 120 boys.
Recent statistics show that in rural Westmoreland, 48 boys under a year
old died, while only 21 girls of the same age succumbed. In Wiltshire,
the ratio was _135 boys to 78 girls_.
To quote from a writer on these startling statistics of the
Registrar-General:--
"Tuberculous diseases, convulsions, intestinal troubles, bronchitis
and pneumonia, and other maladies, all kill more boy than
girl-infants in their first year. The figures are surprising.
Omitting fractions, we find that among 1000 infants of each sex 21
boys die of intestinal troubles to 17 girls; 10 boys die of
convulsions to 8 girls; 21 boys die from bronchitis and pneumonia
to 17 girls; and 14 boys from other causes to 11 girls.
Whooping-cough stands alone, carrying off 3·15 girls to 2·65 boys.
Even when chloroform or ether is given for the purposes of an
operation it kills more boys than girls."
It may be objected that, according to my view, the mortality of girls,
bred of constitutionally impoverished males, should likewise have
increased. But this high mortality among boy-infants and children must
so weed out the weakliest males that many of these do not live to
become fathers. Moreover, by developing into abnormal dominance the
_male_ potential in her, the mother de-vitalises sons more than she
de-vitalises daughters.
Further, these crude hoyden-sisters of the weakly boys fail rather in
the higher attributes of Sex than in mere survival-power. They survive,
but they are marred in type by the stigmata of sex-immaturity or
abnormality.
Increasing sex-impoverishment is bringing into vogue--almost as a matter
of routine--the performance on male infants of an unnatural (and a
degenerative) Jewish rite.
IV
Of the many theories advanced to explain the determination of Sex in
offspring, the true one is, undoubtedly, the relative parental power of
the respective parents.
Normally, this being well-balanced, the ratio of the sexes is about
equal; the preponderance being on the male side, however, owing to the
maternal parental potential being normally greater, because conserved by
reason of her less onerous rôle in life. When parental potential is
relatively greater in the father, female offspring is born. When greater
in the mother, male offspring results. In the families of men notably
virile, daughters preponderate. In those of women notably womanly, sons
are in the majority. (Presuming in such case the parent of the other sex
to be of average potence.)
The preponderance of male-births during War-conditions is due to the
fact that by far the greater stress of these conditions, with consequent
depletion of vital reserves, falls upon the males. Hence the women--who
although depleted likewise by the increased demands upon them, are less
vitally exhausted than the men are--become relatively prepotent in
parental potential. The more virile men being absent on military duty,
moreover, the less virile members of the sex it is who preponderate in
the paternal rôle.
Other parental factors, as of age, health and circumstance, which affect
the sex of offspring, do so _indirectly_ by their effects upon the
relative vital and parental potential of mother and father.
In corroboration of the view that power conserved in the mother
engenders Maleness and masculine vigour in offspring, I have received
the following letter from the Head-mistress of the village-school of
Corley:
"I was much interested in your article _re Boy-babies_. I think my
school here is unique, there being 86 children on the roll, of whom
57 are boys and 29, girls. And of the children in the village who
will be of age for admission this year, 7 are boys and 3, girls.
"In the village there are several families composed of boys only.
One family has 7 boys and 2 girls.
" " " 6 " " 0 "
Two families have 5 " " 1 girl each.
" " " 4 " " 1 " "
"Of one family reckoning 6 boys (1 dead; making 7 in all) the
mother has but one leg--the other having been amputated when she
was fourteen.[2] _None of the mothers here (so for as I can learn)
do work outside their homes_; except in odd cases, an odd day's
washing or cleaning.
"_None do regular work on farms, or otherwise._
"All the children are well-fed, clean and well clothed. Our Medical
Nurse says she finds the finest babies here--of the whole of her
district. For 57 years the yearly returns in School have shown a
great preponderance of boys over girls."
The writer contrasts this Utopian order of things with her experience of
the rickety and otherwise diseased and defective states of
school-children whose mothers were employed in factories.
V
It would seem that the embryological development of the male brain and
nervous system, it is which demands more of vital expenditure on the
part of the mother than does that of the female brain; less elaborately
differentiated as is this in respect of concrete intellection and
physical adaptation.
For this reason, not only is more constitutional vitality on the
mother's part required for the production of sons--and more particularly
of virile sons--but the production of male offspring entails more
stress, and exacts a greater toll, physical and psychical, than does the
ante-natal nurture of the female embryo. Mothers who have borne female
children with but little constitutional strain or suffering may be
greatly debilitated, even invalided, during pregnancy with male
offspring. One finds women permanently weakened in constitution and
function, indeed, from the strain of producing a male. In such cases,
the male may be exceptional of type. Or the mother may be of
exceptionally low vitality.
It has been argued that defect and degeneracy, as hare-lip,
cleft-palate, clubbed or webbed-foot, are more common in the male
because he is normally less highly-developed than the female is. The
contrary is obviously the case. In creating a difficult and a simpler
thing, there will necessarily be more failures in the difficult than in
the simpler product. Being nearer to Nature, the female is usually more
true to the normal type of species. But the type is not so fully
differentiated, or specialised in relation to environment, as is the
male.
It is significant that the female _aphis_, when its vital potential is
stimulated by summer heat, is able to breed without co-operation of the
male, but breeds _females_ only. Supporting not only the view that the
female is the rootstock of species, while the male is, so to speak, an
alien grafted upon it, but indicating too, that the production of
females represents less output of reproductive energy, since one sex
alone is able to accomplish this.
VI
Absence both of womanly emotion and of spiritual attribute disqualifies
the faces of the greater number of our modern "beauties" from being
truly beautiful. They lack those last exquisite touches which psychical
qualities bestow; sweetness, tenderness, gaiety, pensiveness, mystery,
mockery, witchery, wistfulness, surrender, resistance, maidenhood,
motherhood--the celestial and the terrestrial melting into one another
like the colours of the rainbow.
Since evolution is advancing in some stock, modern beauty is, no doubt,
of higher calibre than has been attained in any previous epoch. But for
the most part, the faces of our handsome women are pre-eminently
pagan--bold, sophisticated, clever; without sweetness, softness,
imagination, sensitiveness--in a word, without Soul. The outlines,
howsoever fine, are hard and antipathetic in their uncompromising
firmness. The eyes are cold and critical and challenging, so that their
relentless gaze is sometimes rather of the nature of a blow than it is a
sympathy.
Owing to that setting of the jaw which attends strong muscular action,
the shaping bones of the faces of developing girls thicken and coarsen,
and the naturally delicate, beautiful contours of chin and of cheek
deteriorate to the crude and heavy lower jaws characteristic of a very
large order of the sex to-day.
The weak receding, or the sharply-pointed chin of the over-feminised
type--both early-Victorian and modern--errs in the other direction. To
give fine balance to the face and form--as to the mind--the Male traits
must be duly represented. These broaden and strengthen the curves, and
preserve them from lapsing to narrowness and feebleness; lending touches
of straightness and firmness which nobly enhance the graces. In excess,
they mar and deface, however; as is exemplified in the strong and
slovenly features, without drawing or delicacy, which characterise the
new type of girl being turned out by our schools and colleges, most of
which make now-a-days a speciality of sports. Similar heavy jaws and
blunt, amorphous features are replacing in our working-girls, de-sexed
by masculine employments, the classic, nobly-modelled lineaments which
made our Anglo-Saxon Race once the most beautiful, as it was the most
vigorous and enterprising, of the nations. Such faces may be deplorably
senseless for the sense--and lack of sensibility--in them.
The facial type of the opposite extreme is ultra-feminine--a cameo-like
reversion to an earlier Victorian physiognomy, to which several
generations of mothers have failed to add any new quality. But, unlike
its Victorian prototype, the modern ultra-feminine face lacks blood and
emotion, and shows like a faded attenuation thereof. The cold, delicate
features, with the pinched nostrils which, owing to adenoid
obstruction, have never expanded to a full, inspiring breath of Life,
suggest further cameo-comparison; as being the daintily-carven shell of
an extinct creature.
So devitalised and neurasthenic are many of our pretty young girls, that
their flowerlike faces, topping over-tall and undeveloped bodies,
suggest delicate blossoms crowning long attenuated, sapless stems.
Neither faces nor bodies are vitalised and athrill with powers rooted in
healthful organs; vivified by healthful functions, and instinct with
warm, iron-rich, magnetic blood. They show that making for beauty which
is inherent in the Woman-traits, but which, in latter-day girls, owing
to defective constitutional vigour or to educational, social or
industrial exhaustion, has been able to realise itself only in sickly
and weed-like development.
Life manifests in these neurotics in the form of vivacities merely; not
as vitalities.
Severed from their natural roots in Life and vital function, they
resemble nothing more than charming cut-blossoms gracefully fading on
drawing-room shelves.
The truth is that girls brought up on modern strenuous methods skip the
years between 16 and 26. If young and fresh at 16, all at once we find
them 26 in constitution and in temperament--a little lean, a little
lined, a little wan, a little shrill, a little chill, and only too often
more than a little disillusioned and cynical--in a word already
_passées_. Some are, of course, an interesting and attractive 26, but
the fresh, warm, vital and beautiful years from 17 to 27, the years of a
natural woman's most charming bloom of mind and body, have dropped from
their lives, like petals from roses. So that our girls in their 'teens
require to hide the ravages of time by every sort of artifice. And at 26
in years, they are approaching the forties in constitution and
temperament; are even keen on politics, cards, finance--resorts,
pre-eminently, of materialistic middle-age.
This blighting of young womanhood, with loss of youthful bloom and
responsiveness, it is that has led to the decadent and demoralising
vogue of the Flapper. Since, beyond all things, men seek vital youth and
freshness in the other sex, to find it now-a-days, they must seek it in
children.
VII
Deplorable are the degenerative processes by way of which those noble
natural characteristics of the Woman-sex which Nature has achieved by
ages of evolutionary advance may be observed to lapse, and are presently
all but obliterated from the woman form and face.
Increasingly the curves straighten; the conflict between straight lines
and curves occasioning wrinkles. The jaw squares. The lips lose womanly
fullness, sweetness, and their natural colour and texture of
rose-leaves; becoming thin and pale and stern. Shadows gather round
them, foreshadowing, it may be, a masculine growth of hair. Hair loses
lustre and grows sparse, particularly above the brows. The chin loses
its feminine softness; rigidity and grimness being substituted. Eyes
lose fullness, tenderness, brilliance, and woman's normal melting
expression. The glance grows chill, hard, shrewd, direct. Crowsfeet mar
the modelled lids. The serene, inspiring woman-brows are furrowed by the
permanent frown of eye-strain or of nervous tension. The voice falls
flat and metallic, or drops into gruffness and harshness; losing its
delicate tuneful inflections, its sympathetic timbre, its joyous
quality. The cheeks hollow; the white temples are wrecked.
In the faces of women whose systems are functioning healthfully, a
number of exquisite artistries in cellular texture of skin and in
tinting appear; the skin beneath the eyes differing from that of
the cheeks, that of the brows differing from that of the chin,
that above the mouth from that below, and so forth. In women
subjected to constitutional strain, all these exquisite artistic
differentiations--product of incalculable evolutionary developments--are
obliterated; the skin over the whole face becoming of the same grain and
hue, as is normal to the male. The body becomes spare and sinewy, or set
and spread; its movements heavy and abrupt. And more and more the hidden
male emerges from the wreckage. The male right arm, swinging like a
pendulum, suggests itself as being the motive-power of the ungraceful
mechanism.
With the increasing maleness of physique, male mental proclivities
develop; obsessions to wear trousers, to smoke, to stride, to kill, and
otherwise to indulge the masculine bent.
* * * * *
It may be objected that Beauty takes too high a place in the counsels of
this book. _Beauty is Normality_, however. Nature, in her every aim and
handiwork, makes beyond every other thing for grace. Weed and moth,
shell and beetle, humming-bird and dragon-fly--all are lovely in
technique and artistry. Plainness and uncouthness in humans only too
often belie noble mind or disposition. This results, however, from such
failure of vital resources that the individual had fine material only to
equip his mind, and none left over to adorn his body.
One sees the converse too, where all the available potential of beauty
has been lavished on handsome exteriors.
Plainness is a mark of abnormality. The victim may be normal in other
respects. But in this, he or she is abnormal. And more particularly
_she_--since Woman is both medium and Creatrix of living harmony and
grace. So is comeliness declining, however, that one of the
specifications of a recent Baby-Competition was that beauty would not be
a necessary qualification.
Yet Beauty is the natural birthright and The Normal of all babes and
children.
VIII
The Male cult is impressed now at the earliest age. Some of our hapless
little girls, in consequence of having been subjected early to strain of
masculine drill, hockey, cricket and other rough and strenuous
exertions, are more like colts or smaller-sized bullocks in their crude
conformation and ungainly movements, as also in their crude mentality
and manners, than they are like charming human maids.
Few developments in life are prettier or more engaging than is a natural
little girl. The sex of her, with its fair Woman-attributes, reveals
itself early in children of high organisation. Crowned by her curls, in
her simple white frock, she is as fresh and dainty, as winsome and
elusive as a fairy. Her little Woman-soul begins to make for beauty ere
ever she can walk. Ere ever she can walk, she moves her limbs in rhythm
of the dance. She tries to sing. She stretches out a tiny finger and
reverently touches a bright colour--a blue ribbon, a gold button, a pink
flower on a chintz. Set her in a field, she runs to cram her hands with
daisies. She fills, within the House of Life, an exquisite small niche
that nothing else can fill.
Yet now they are cropping her fair curls, are exchanging her white frock
for masculine knickers. They are training her soft limbs and exquisite
elastic movements to the hard and rigid action of the soldiers' drill
and march; are teaching her to stride her pony that once she sat as
prettily and lightly as a bird; are making a hard, boisterous tom-boy of
her, with lusty, hairy limbs and uncouth manners; perverting all her
natural highly-differentiated delicate attributes and graces to clumsy
lower-grade form and activities.
They have robbed her of her Doll, whose helplessness and wax perfection
fostered sentiments of worship, tenderness and ministry in her. They
have given her a whipping-top, which--unlike the boy, who pleasures in
the skill and mechanism of its handling--she lashes with contorted
features and neurotic spitefulness.
With characteristic scorn of physical disability, Feminism contemns old
age as disease or degeneracy--a weakness to be combated with latter-day
strenuousness, cloaked by a counterfeit youthfulness, forced exertions
(even games!) simulated youthful zests and gaieties.
Beyond all things, women are exhorted not to allow themselves to "grow
old" as their grandmothers did, sitting, comely and tranquil and wise,
at their quiet firesides.
Yet the truth is, Age is a natural beautiful phase; in its way, as
natural, as healthful and as beautiful as are any of the younger
seasons. Calm and stately as the snows of Nature's winter, as Nature's
winter shows us, old age does not presage death--because there is no
Death. That we call Death is but a temporary Recession from the Outer
and Terrestrial to the Inner and Celestial zone of Being. And with the
vital quietude and longer-sightedness of eyes, come spiritual quickening
and longer-sightedness of mental view. So that both eyes and mind
perceive The Outer more and more obscurely, focusing more and more on
The Remote. The stream of life runs stilly for the reason that it runs
more deep; centring again to that Within and Spiritual, whence it issued
in Birth, and will issue again in re-Birth.
Compare such serene-faced, dignified age, cause to all of reverence and
tenderness, for the mystery and pathos of its wise and tranquil
resignation--Compare such with the restless, harried, malcontent old age
of modern counsels!
IX
Before the advent of that admirable institution, the Eugenics Education
Society, for the establishment of a new Science of Heredity, as, too, of
a new propaganda of Race-Culture, vital and illuminating data, not only
of supreme scientific interest but, moreover, of the greatest practical
significance, passed, for the most part, unnoted.
I venture to believe, however, that Eugenic propaganda has been too much
in the direction of eliminating defect from the Race by prohibiting
marriage to the so-called "Unfit." Whereas the true way of Racial
health, of normality and excellence, is, surely, to eliminate from life
the many conditions, material, economic, and personal, which make for
Unfitness--which preclude, indeed, the survival of little save
Unfitness.
For since we are not in the secret of Nature's aims, and are wholly in
the dark as to the human type for which she is aiming, to prohibit
parenthood to any but the flagrantly abnormal, the insane and imbecile,
the epileptic and the hopelessly-diseased, might be to quench the
evolution of such higher Fitness as we are not qualified to foresee.
That which shows like disability in one age may be the incipient ability
of a later. In cruder, primitive days, when standards of Fitness were
physical strength, rapacity and cunning, honesty and mercy, and more
delicate organisation of body--the starting-points of new routes of
evolutionary development--would have been condemned as worthy only of
extermination.
In sickly and declining stock there may exist, moreover, an ebbing vein
of rare faculty, which, re-vitalised by a due potential of maternal
re-creative power, might come to throb with genius.
Realising all the factors--the innumerable lives, the incalculable
personal traits, endeavours and experiences, that have gone to make the
Individualism of any strain of stock, and realising that just these
factors of Individualism can have occurred in one line only of human
ascent and can never be repeated, it becomes clear that summarily to
extinguish any human strain, by arbitrary prohibition, would be to
exterminate a unique branch of the great Life-tree, and thereby to
deprive the Race of a specialised route of further ascent; a route which
no other stock could supply.
The fact that great families, with great histories and talents behind
them, fall into decadence shows that even in decadent stock are
inherences of greatness which might be recruited to greatness again.
While apart from all this, the right of Parenthood, with the
evolutionary impulse to character and faculty consequent upon the
exercise of parental functions, is the birthright of every individual
capable of fulfilling such. The counsel of Selective Parenthood is
dangerous doctrine, indeed. Given Life, Nature by her methods of Disease
is able to eliminate stock too deteriorate for, or beside her purpose.
But she alone knows her purpose. And she alone can judge as to what is
intrinsic Fitness for Survival.
Selective Parenthood makes, moreover, for the elimination of those
valuable object-lessons of inherited defect and disease, whereby Nature
points her inestimable morals of healthy and disciplined living. For
evasion, too, of those penalties and burdens in the care and maintenance
of the Unfit, which a nation justly incurs by such social wrongs and
maladministrations as are largely responsible for disease and defect.
The doctrine of operative sterilisation is not only humanly repugnant
but, in view of the psychological import of every physical function, it
is essentially evil.
X
Some momentous morals of the Feminist trend are pointed by the
Insect-world, which may be regarded as a devolutionary back-water,
wherein Life is slowly ebbing toward extinction by fluctuating out in
ever smaller, meaner, drabber, ineffective, pulseless and spectral
existences--chill and teeming myriads unwarmed by the throb of emotion,
unillumined by the light of Mind. Dust which, raised from dust by power
of Life, has caught the trick of living, and goes on living and
perpetuating, without cause or impulse other than age-old, time-worn
mechanistic habit imparted by the state of living.
And in this phantom under-world of Decadence, cast by the shadow of Life
and peopled with distorted images thereof, the females are
Dominant--larger in size, stronger, more active, more enterprising and
ferocious than the males. As in the world of Vegetation, by way whereof
Matter first quickened into Life, so in this realm of _Insectivoræ_ by
way of which Life is gravitating back to the inertia of Inorganic
Matter, in ever shallower, denser and more sluggish strata, the male is
seen as appanage and victim of the female.
In the beehive, he appears as ineffective drone amid a throng of
strenuous neuter female-workers. And a female is his Queen.
Significant again is it that insect-females are seen increasingly to
have emancipated themselves from mother-instincts and maternal
functions, as regards nurture or affection for their young. The single
process wherein the warring males and snarling females of finer fierce,
evolving species sheathe their claws and mute their hates in a
co-operative, self-effacing instinct--Reproduction, here in this
disintegrating world of Devolution, functions without welding spark, or
lighting gleam of parent-altruism. At best, it is as chill, as
colourless and meticulously mechanical as the interminable tickings of a
world of clockwork. At worst, it is a repulsive rapacity on the part of
females to secure perpetuation. And this secured, they straightway sting
the craven male to death, or tear him limb from limb and ghoulishly
devour him.
Queen Bee leads her vassal suitors so strenuous and dizzying an
ante-nuptial dance, for privilege of mating with her, that only one
survives to claim the prize; the others dropping, dead and dying, in the
wake of her murderous supremacy. And, as with other masculine and
muscular females, her progeny are neuter working-females (sterile) and
emasculate males (drones).
As Feminists demand for human babes, the Bee-mother hands over her
offspring to be brought up by the State. While some other
insect-mothers, having reposited their eggs (to serve as bombs that
explode and devastate their living hosts) straightway abandon them, and
return to the more strenuous and repulsive female-pursuits of this
Phantasmagoria-world--a clockwork kingdom fabricated of Life's debris,
and drably mimicking the throb and motion of its mechanism in ghoulish
mockeries and vacuous reiterations; the while it runs down slowly,
ticking back to the molecular vibration of mineral inertia.
END OF BOOK I
NOTE.--_Mendelian and other readers interested in the more scientific
aspects of the subject are referred to an Appendix at the end of this
volume, in which these issues are further considered and some important
evidences adduced._
FOOTNOTE:
[2] I have observed that lameness in women, by restricting physical
activities and thus conserving vital energy, conduces to male offspring.
The fact may well have been the origin of the Chinese custom of
crippling the feet of female children. In my own professional practice,
by prohibiting all strenuous and exhausting pursuits, intellectual,
social or athletic, before and after marriage, I have succeeded in
securing male offspring in patients whose stock had for generations
given birth to girls only. In those _organically_ de-sexed by male
pursuits, rest will not avail, of course.--_Author._
BOOK II
WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN DECADENCE
CHAPTER I
DECLINE AND FALL OF ANCIENT CIVILISATIONS DUE TO FEMINISM
"This is the function of our and every age, to grasp the knowledge
already existing, to make it our own, and in so doing to develop it
further and raise it to a higher level. In thus taking it to
ourselves we make it different from what it was."--_Hegel._
I
Ancient history is depressing study.
It shows us peoples rising slowly and laboriously out of states of
barbarism to high degrees of culture and enlightenment, and then, more
or less suddenly, falling upon decline; lapsing to total extinction,
even. One after another, we may watch them climb the Evolutionary Hill,
then slacken pace and struggle on spasmodically. Till presently we find
them steadily losing ground; slowly at first, but, gathering momentum,
regressing more and more rapidly, until finally they are seen racing
headlong to destruction.
Of some among the proudest and the greatest Civilisations, so absolute
has been their ultimate extinction that nothing more than ruined temples
and some statuary remain to mark their quondam glory.
Biologists tell us this is natural. Races, they say--like
individuals--have only a certain life-tenure. They are born, develop,
attain maturity, lapse to old age and then die; just as men do.
The analogy is not sound, however. Because although individual men die,
the stock they leave behind, if duly preserved and replenished by fresh
blood, may live indefinitely. Moreover, such records as remain show
that these past civilisations died, obviously, not of natural old
age--but of disease. Natural old age is sane and wise, and
self-controlled; healthful in mind and in body. Whereas the main
features characterising the decline of these great powers, were
viciousness and licentiousness; physical, mental and moral corruption.
Theirs was no passing in gradual waning of strength and quiet
dissolution; not even in senility. They may be described, on the
contrary, as having rushed helter-skelter upon death in full vigour of
their prime. We see in them, indeed, all the vehemence and
self-destructive forces of "sthenic" disease--disease as it occurs in
strong men struck down in full health. They died in riot, venality, and
lust, and every other form of vice and evil. Clearly, they died
unnaturally--of disease, not naturally of old age.
How and why then did this happen? How and why should disease thus have
stricken these in mid-career? Since history shows the political
institutions, the laws and the administration of many of such mighty
decadents to have reached high levels of excellence, in respect of
justice and intelligence, while Culture, Art and Industry were likewise
notable among them, the causes of their downfall must be looked for
elsewhere than in their sociology.
And since all human processes, sociological as well as natural, have
their roots in Biology, we are led to examine such records as remain,
for evidences of biological failure. Healthy and vigorous races do not
decline in consequence of unjust laws or maladministration. If they are
healthy and vigorous, they reform these.
II
Investigation shows one striking feature as having been common to most
of these great decadences. In nearly every case, the dominance and
licence of their women were conspicuous. And realising Woman's
portentous rôle in Racial advance, it is difficult to believe anything
but that her rôle must be equally potent in Racial decline.
A nation becomes decadent because the individuals composing it have
become decadent. The individuals composing it can only have become
progressively decadent by progressive hereditary decadences. And since
Woman is the racial reservoir and the Agency of Evolution, hereditary
decline of individuals and nations must have its source in a decline of
mother-power.
History confirms this view. It shows the progress and waxing supremacy
of these great powers to have been concurrent with rising levels of
womanly character and virtue, with high regard for woman by man, with
high estimation and observance by woman of the functions of motherhood
and of The Home. While neglect of the home, contempt for and evasion of
the duties of motherhood, immorality and general licence among their
women characterised their downfall.
And comparing some modern developments with these records of Ruin, one
can but be struck by notable resemblances between these latter and the
present-day trend of all our greater civilisations.
In the decline of Rome, the Roman women went to two extremes. A tendency
that shows increasingly among our modern womanhood. They separated into
two main orders. "Blue-stocking" and "Rake," they were then designated.
"Mannish" and "Womanish," or "Feminist" and "Ultra-Feminine," better
characterise their latter-day presentments.
In America, these two orders of women are known as the "College" and the
"Society" types, respectively. The "College" type makes a cult of
masculinity of body and of brain. The "Society" type makes a cult of
feminine graces and social accomplishments.
In the poorer, as in the superior classes of all nations, similar
extremes are found. One order is virile and hard-working; and for the
most part plain and moral. The other is womanish and pretty; and for the
most part frail.
With us--as with those earlier peoples--the demand for liberty and
unrestricted economic opportunities for women is occasioning contempt
for and evasion of the functions of wife and of mother, emancipation
from the home, increasing absorption in public affairs, fever for
pleasure, lapse of womanly traditions and morale. All of which
developments passed rapidly, in those others, into general laxity,
licence and corruption; culminating finally in total ruin. With them,
the claims of Home and of The Family became, as they are becoming more
and more with us, secondary merely and subsidiary to other pursuits; to
personal ambitions, public careers, to pleasures, excitements, crazes
for notoriety. Woman's inherent erraticism--defect of her intrinsic
spontaneity, her bent for novelty and strong sensation--degenerated,
under the licence accorded her in ancient Rome, into the appalling
orgies of The Bacchanalia; which were instituted by the sex.
Women attended the displays of gladiators. They watched the wild beasts
tear their victims. They themselves dressed as gladiators, and held
mimic combats. By cult of muscle, they grew taller than the men.
Sallust writes thus of a notorious Roman matron:
"Sempronia had committed many crimes of a boldness _worthy of a man_.
Blest alike in family and beauty, in husband and children, she was
well-read in Greek and Roman literature; could sing, play and dance more
gracefully than any honest woman need; had many of the other
accomplishments of a riotous life. She cared for nothing less than for
decency and modesty."
Fifty years later, Seneca takes up the story of a rapid decadence: "The
ladies do not reckon the years by the number of the Consuls, but by the
number of their husbands."
Much the same licence, extravagance and viciousness of the sex
characterised the greater number of those other old-world wreckages.
The higher Woman-attributes ceased to evolve; ceased to be exercised;
ceased to inspire. Women cultivated solely, or pre-eminently, the
male-side of their natures; muscle, intellect, ambition, concrete
activities, indulgence of sex-instincts. By power of which masculine and
alien proclivities, they increasingly dominated the men, in whom the
virile traits had proportionally declined. Thus, more and more, the
purifying, uplifting and inspiring potence of true Womanhood, together
with the softening refinements of The Home, became ever further
withdrawn from the national life. Thus corruption undermined; and chaos
finally engulfed.
III
Things were different in Ancient Greece.
It has been said that Greece fell because she did not give her women
liberty. For a time comes, in the development of every nation, when its
women must be freed. Or decadence sets in inevitably. And some of those
old civilisations declined, undoubtedly, from lack of progress in this
respect.
It would seem that the first sips of liberty require to be administered
to the sex with caution, however; the effects observed carefully, the
doses increased warily. Otherwise, impulsive and impressionable as they
are, women lose their heads; become intoxicated, and get out of hand.
And once women get out of hand, it is next to impossible to bring them
again under control (as was seen in the outbreaks of Feminist
militancy). Civilisation forbids that men shall deal with them as with
masculine rebels. And fenced thus behind the privileges of their own
sex, when armed with the prerogatives of the other, they may prove
dangerously difficult customers.
In ancient Greece, the wives and mothers and the other reputable women
had but little or no freedom. They lived, for the most part, in
seclusion; dull and unintelligent and uneventful lives. There was no
pure, wholesome, and inspiring social life. The only women who were free
were the _hetairai_, those famous ladies who shed a lurid brilliance
over the corruption and decline of this great State--a decline wherewith
they had, most certainly, much to do. A faction apart from the wives and
mothers--although many among them were courtesans, they stood apart too
from the courtesan class. Women who had found in the unfreed state of
the wife and mother of their epoch, inadequate scope for their impulses
and talents, they broke away from domestic conditions, to form a coterie
of free lances--a cultured, brilliant and alluring band of renegades,
sought and esteemed for their beauty and intelligence by all men;
aristocrat, philosopher, and pleasure-seeker.
More likely than that Greece fell because she did not emancipate her
women, it is that she fell because the women who emancipated themselves
abandoned the rôles of wife, of mother, and other reputable functions.
For these Grecian _hetairai_ comprised, in the main, the flower of their
generation. One sees them, indeed, as brilliant Racial poison-blossoms,
greedily appropriating and exploiting to their own purposes the nation's
beauty and the nation's talent, its aspirations, potence,
passion--without transmitting any of these racial attainments to a later
generation. In place of endowing their kind with such nobler light and
faculty, inspiration and sweetness, as supply a people's evolutionary
impulse, they abandoned the home and the sacred and spiritualising
functions of true wifehood, and of the motherhood of such higher living
types as are indispensable to lead a nation's progress.
A kindred movement--modified, for the present, by the more enlightened
traditions of our Century--is foreshadowing itself across the higher
civilisations of our day. More and more, our better types of women (the
misinterpretations of the Feminist Movement having imparted a distorted
bias and direction to their powers) are similarly abandoning the Home,
or are withdrawing their best interests and talents from it; are evading
wholly, or are gravely restricting their maternal obligations to the
Race; regarding children as bye-products, merely, of life--vastly less
important than some hobby or career. In place of realising the new
generation as the Vanguard of Life and Evolution; that which beyond
every other human achievement counts in the Universe.
Worse than this even, more and more, everywhere, women are failing in
the maternal power of transmitting to offspring the health, the beauty,
the abilities and aspirations which are the model and ideals of our age.
IV
A menace to the Race more alarming than that of the hard and mannish
woman (who, because of her lack of womanly attractiveness, is debarred,
in considerable degree, from marriage) is another and less ungraciously
obvious deviation from The Normal--an order of the sex, modern and
artificial, and rapidly increasing in number, over-civilised and
highly-feminised both of physique and of temperament, which may be
described as an Ultra-Feminine, or, in contradistinction to the
Feminist, as a Feminist order.
Their womanhood but lightly rooted in neurotic systems, the women of
this sect are unstable and erratic, seeking distraction for their
restless, ill-balanced forces, in cards, crazes, drugs; fads and freaks.
Unfitted for wifehood and motherhood--some by faulty heredity, but a far
greater number by educational strain and consequent warp--some of these
ultra-feminised and frequently interesting creatures absorb themselves
feverishly in public movements; religious, social or political. Some are
persons of irreproachable morale and ideals; devoted, gifted, wholly
admirable. And being wives not seldom of men as talented, it is
deplorable that warp of culture, unfitting them for motherhood, should
have left such to waste their powers and aspirations in beating the thin
air merely of Utopian propaganda. When, otherwise, they might have led
the true and only way of Progress by endowing the Race with living
presentments and evolving treasuries of the parental ideals and
endowments.
The greater her charm, the nobler her character and talent, the more the
pity is when woman is defective in the power to transmit her high
qualities, or has power to transmit these in inferior degree only; thus
sealing up for ever, or gravely impoverishing a vital spring of living
faculty and individualism--a unique line of Human Ascent which no other
stock can supply, and one which may have been leading up to the
production of genius such as the world has not yet known.
Another--and quite different--sub-order of this neurotic (and
partially-sterilised) type, in losing its higher potential of motherhood
has lost the racial instinct wherein personal virtue is rooted. The
lives of these are free and irregular. Not measures, but men, are their
vogue; to serve as admirers of their charm and talents, as spectators of
their temperamental extravagances. Incapable of the emotions of love,
they seek, are discontented, and seek further when they do not find in
its excitements, the joys and contentment that reside alone in deep and
abiding emotions. The poise and repose, the charm, the refreshment and
the inspiration of true Womanhood are lacking in them. They demand
increasing novelty and change of venue for their ill-ballasted powers
and capricious sensibilities. And this precisely in proportion as they
are deficient in those womanly emotions and illusions which endue the
least and simplest things with glamour and with beauty.
This type, which can scarcely be said to _live_, but merely to frolic
through life, is pre-eminently dangerous to progress. Because, while
possessing the psychology, the appeal and influence of women, some of
these have cast off, utterly, the traditions, the nobler aspirations and
the functions of the best womanhood.
V
It is universally admitted that a bad woman is far more wicked than a
bad man is. She is more callous, ruthless, wanton and debased. The
irresponsibility regarding concrete affairs (innate in a sex whereof The
Concrete is only secondarily the province) makes her a dangerous and a
demoralising factor when her acquired male brain and activities (for the
clever, bad woman is always of masculine bent) over-ride her own natural
aptitudes. Because the powers she has artificially acquired--in
substitution for her native ones--do not alter her inherent constitution
of a creature builded upon instincts; instincts which her native higher
qualities are alone adequate to guide and inspire. One may acquire some
of the characteristics of an opposite sex, _but never the morale_; which
is inborn and inherent to the natural sex-characteristics.
Faculty declines in the inverse order of its development. The bloom and
beauty of the peach and of the flower are the last things to come--and
the first to go. So, in forfeiting her womanly qualities, woman forfeits
earliest the best of these. Love and purity and spiritual aspiration
perish first; with the result that the lower-grade female Subconscious
emotionalism, instinct and palpitant with animal impulse, comes into
play.
Man requires to degenerate to far inferior levels than is the case with
woman, before he so loses his normal rationalism as to forfeit his sense
of proportion and of his responsibility with regard to material affairs,
and that stern obligation to conform to environmental conditions which
has been the impelling force of male development. Irresponsibility is in
him an acquired--and a feminine--defect; not an inherent failing of his
sex. The very basis of the manly character is a recognition of the male
responsibility in life's affairs. It was the impulse of man's primal
struggle. It is the mark of his civilised manhood.
Irresponsibility is, on the contrary, innate in woman. It is part of
that spontaneity, plasticity, and versatility which have engendered the
racial evolutionary mutations; and by way of these have engendered the
progressive transitions to ever higher forms. And indispensable as her
native mutability is in making her the agency of evolutionary change, it
is an insecure and a dangerous basis for too heavy a super-structure of
male characteristics, physical or mental; as also for too heavy a burden
of male responsibilities. It disqualifies her for liberty and scope of
action identical with man's, in material affairs.
The further we fit her, moreover (beyond her normal capacity), for such
affairs, by artificially equipping her with masculine aptitudes, the
more we unfit her for her evolutionary rôle of spontaneous advance. Her
chiefest values lie in the spring and the plasticity which enable her to
adapt her nature to the evolutionary impulses of life inherent in her;
and thereby to engender further human evolution. For this, it is
important that she shall not be moulded on those firmer and more
definitely prescribed lines of masculine development which are
indispensable to the pioneering of material progress. Nor should her
powers be equally differentiated, or similarly expended. They must be
left, in far greater degree, conserved, unformulate and unadapted.
Normally, she is the child of Nature, in whom (because she is the
mother of the human child, who shapes to the maternal model) Nature is
unfolding the type of our Perfecting Humanity. She should remain,
therefore, more or less in the native and spontaneously fructifying
state conducive to evolutionary unfoldment. When she adapts as closely
to concrete conditions as it is imperative for man to do, not only does
she exhaust the potential fertility indispensable to the further
evolution and growth of racial faculty, but her powers lose that mode of
flux which enables them to tide to higher levels.
While man stands for Civilisation, woman stands for Nature. Generatrix
of Life, she is instinct with vital impulses. And when these are not
expended, as is normal, in the creation of and ministration to living
and beloved beings, they generate warped, erratic and chaotic
aberrations. Because, no matter to what degree she may acquire masculine
characteristics and aptitudes, she remains, at core, a creature of
instinct; not of reason. As a creature of instinct she is invaluable to
life--because Life is moulded upon instinct. But instinct and
rationalism function on different planes of mentality. To over-develop
rationalism in her is to quench emotionalism in her, and the higher
illumination of her Supra-conscious faculties; thus rendering her the
prey of smouldering subconscious impulses which burst fitfully and
mischievously into flame.
For Progress, man must be always the leading half and controller in
politics and civic affairs. These are his province. His sex stands for
permanence and conformity--and, accordingly, for uniformity. And
uniformity is the model for Civilisation, making as it does for justice
and the common good.
Woman's non-conformability adapts her admirably to the personal
relations of life, but not to the political. Man builds institutions and
administers them by more or less rigid impersonal rule. Woman transforms
them into homes, and humanises them by individual concessions and
exceptions.
So the two are supplement and complement in the public as in the natural
sphere. But their respective rôles are contrary in every mode and issue.
Man's conformity, political and civic, is continually leavened by the
element of non-conformity and change he inherits from his mother, with
her other Woman-traits. But in him, her spontaneity and impulse are so
intelligised and stabilised by his masculine rationalism and bent for
order that, in place of operating emotionally and spasmodically, they
become tempered and restrained. Under his administration, material
advance proceeds slowly, but surely and securely. His masculine
intelligence and sense of responsibility cause him to adjust the
maternal evolutionary impulses,--which he inherits as reformatory and
revolutionary impulses--to the exigencies of practicability, and the
requirements of circumstance.
VI
There is no more difficult, or possibly mischievous, person than a
strong and clever woman whose over-developed masculine energies and
abilities are controlled neither by a man's reason and sense of
responsibility, nor by a woman's natural disabilities, affections and
restraints. She is sometimes prodigiously clever; adding to her male
talents a woman's fertility, versatility, adaptability, complexity and
intuitiveness. And yet with all their gifts, such women accomplish
little but harm--alike to themselves and others.
Erratic, fickle, irrepressible, they are perpetually flying off at
tangents. Now they are one thing too much. Now they are the opposite--in
an equal extreme.
Medleys of contradictions and perversities, they are no sooner repressed
in one direction, or become fatigued by the monotony of any single line
of action, than they burst forth in some other. Their abnormal
mentality and energy, allied to their innate impulsiveness and craving
for change, impel them to break loose from those bonds of affection, of
tradition and of aspiration, which are woman's safeguards. There is in
the nature of most women, this dangerous quicksand of irresponsibility,
which may, in crises, topple and submerge the soundest structure of
education and of habit builded over it. This is seen in the abandon and
anarchy of the sex in riots and in revolutions.
Such women rebels become increasingly a law unto themselves, and see no
reason why all others should not do likewise. They lack the masculine
grip of concrete principles to recognise that general lawlessness and
individual liberty cannot co-exist. Because where every man is free to
do as he pleases, no man is free to do as he pleases, owing to some
other man's abuse of his liberty encroaching on that of his neighbours.
Women of this order are the Cleopatras, Agrippinas, Messalinas and the
Catharines of Russia; the de Pompadours, de Staëls, Georges Sands, and
the innumerable other self-centred, unconscionable female-egotists whose
extravagances shriek discordant down the ages.
Lacking both a woman's morals and a man's ethics, they are freaks of
Nature; or are Frankensteins of abnormal culture. When they are not
Empresses, to indulge in shameful licence--their male abilities
exaggerating their woman-instincts to the dimensions of
megalomanias--their inordinate ambitions make them mistresses of crowned
heads, or of others whose rank or wealth supplies their mistresses with
means and scope for their unbridled prodigalities. Privileged by their
sex and by masculine favour, their lawlessness protected from its
merited penalties by the law-abiding of their fellows, they become
intoxicated--frequently insane--as result of their successes and
excesses. The famous courtesans have been (and are still) for the most
part women of this ilk; persons of steel brain and will, without a
woman's aspirations or emotions to soften their self-centredness; nor a
man's code to discipline their wantonness. They make men the instruments
and the victims of their feminine defects, which are all--or nearly
all--of woman they possess; self-consciousness distorted to a monstrous
vanity, emotions dwarfed to greeds and lusts.
One after another, they exploit their victims, by exercise, precisely,
of the same masculine business-abilities and ruthlessness which make men
fraudulent company-promoters, profiteers, or sweaters of the poor. When
one has served their purpose, they cast him off for another.
Cold-blooded, clever, and emotionless, although sometimes sensual in a
fashion purely male (in keeping with their other male proclivities) they
are adventuresses, spies, poisoners, adultresses, monsters; abiding
reproach to a noble sex; terrible example of the fate awaiting that sex,
as penalty for abnormal development of masculine characteristics beyond
the capacity of its Woman-traits to counterpoise and guide.
Power, which strengthens and steadies all but weak men, only too often
drives women to destruction. A factor in this is that those privileges
of their sex which have become, more or less, their civilised
prerogative, preserve them from the salutary harsh and stern rebuffs
which men in like circumstance inevitably encounter.
If women are to have scope and authority identical with men's, then they
must forgo all privileges; must come out from their fence behind strong
arms and chivalry to meet masculine blows in the face, economic and
ethical--if not actual, indeed, as Prévost has predicted.
And then, Heaven help them--and men--and the Race!
CHAPTER II
THE EVOLUTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE
"I am for you and you are for me,
Not only for your own sake, but for others' sakes,
Envelop'd in you, sleep great heroes and bards,
They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me."
_Walt Whitman._
I
A French biologist has discovered that when a female oyster is starved,
and its constitution thus deteriorated, it becomes transformed into a
male.
The male oyster must be inferior, therefore, in organisation to the
female. Its constitutional potential is less, since the constitutional
potential of the female contains both its own, and the potential of the
male. And the lesser, it is admitted, cannot contain the greater;
although higher evolutionary forms, when subjected to conditions which
preclude them from sustaining these their higher forms, may lapse to
modes less complex.
Further and more striking examples of such Sex-transformation are
afforded by so-called "mules," or "neuters," which occur in other
species. A well-known case is that of a pea-hen belonging to Lady Tynte.
Having laid eggs from which chicks were raised, this pea-hen, after
moulting, developed feathers proper to the other sex; appearing like a
pied peacock. In the third year the same phenomenon occurred in her; she
developed spurs, moreover, resembling those of the cock. _She never bred
after this change in her plumage._
As already mentioned, kindred phenomena of sex-metamorphosis are
observed in women after operations involving removal of reproductive
glands.
That the female is, indeed, a more complex order of organisation than
the male, is not to be doubted, since masculine characteristics emerge
from it when it lapses from its normal of condition.
Adolescence as it occurs in the boy and in the girl emphasises this
conclusion.
To the age of twelve or thereabouts, the normal boy- and girl-child are
like enough to one another; smooth-skinned, active, simple creatures.
The boy is, normally, larger, sturdier, stronger and rougher than the
girl. But, save for the cut of their hair and of their clothes, the two
are very similar.
With the transition to manhood and womanhood, respectively, notable
differences accrue, however.
From having been a strong, young, active, boy-like creature,
now--provided her development be allowed to take the normal course--the
girl loses physical activity and strength. A phase of invalidation sets
in. Instinctively, she no longer runs and romps. New languors invest her
in mind and in body. She is indisposed to brain-work or to much
exertion. She lounges and muses. Her mind is clouded with the mists of
awakening sensibilities. She suffers from lassitudes.
She becomes a complex of disabilities, indeed; disabilities which in
delicate, sickly or over-taxed girls, show in chlorosis, anæmia,
hysteria and other ills. Obviously, profound changes, with
re-adjustments of her constitutional resources, are taking place in her.
And most significant of these is that which shows like an _arrest_ of
development, physical and intellectual. Because, normally, she develops
but little further along direct lines of intellect and muscle. Yet that
she is still developing, and this upon wholly new--subtler, higher and
more complex lines, is manifest at the end of this transition-period
whence she emerges, a woman.
Her developmental arrest and her disabilities (resulting from an
intensification of Recessive processes in her) are seen now to have
subserved a phase of higher evolution. Nature suddenly locked the door
upon her differentiating and escaping energies, in order that these
might be conserved and knit into organisation. The active muscularity
she has lost reappears in the new factors of symmetry and delicate
modelling of limb; in repose and grace of movement. The straight, slim,
boy-like lines of the hoyden girl have evolved into the curves and
rounded suppleness and beauties of a woman. The girlish, agile and
abrupt movements have passed into a woman's poise and grace. The
unformed features of the child have become now delicately modelled; the
curveless, emotionless lips have bloomed into the flower-like, rosy
fullness of a woman's mouth; passionate and tender. New mystery and
brilliance light her eyes. Eyes and brows are charged with potencies;
with seriousness, with modesty, serenity, elusiveness. Hair and hands,
voice and expression, have become transfigured by the magic of a
re-creative impulse which has regenerated her whole being.
So too her brain development, arrested along lines of concrete
intellection, is seen to have evolved to higher, subtler forms of
mentality; to be instinct with delicacy, sympathy, tact, and with that
incalculable mode of supra-conscious cerebration which is intuition. In
so far as she is of high, womanly type, she is now warm and emotional,
sympathetic, intuitive; consciously pure, yet delicately passionate.
From a crude and sexless hoyden, she has evolved into an exquisite
complexity; invested all round with higher values, human and psychical.
As in their earliest beginnings, however, so now again the Woman-traits
manifest as Unfitnesses. Her new departure has actually undone in her
much that had been achieved in physical adaptation.
Biologists, observing this arrest of development in the female, have
interpreted it as sign of an organisation inferior to that of the male.
In point of fact, the contrary is the case. Her arrest of development
along lines of masculine inherence no more proves her inferior to the
male than does the human developmental arrest along lines of that tail
our ape-progenitor possessed, prove the human inferior to the
ape-species.
This arrest of tail-development occurred first in the female, doubtless;
being one of those evolutionary mutations in the direction of advance of
Type which are engendered in her sex; and which are characterised by a
conversion to higher potential, of differentiations in respect of
adaptation to environment that have been achieved in the male.
Conversion of male Fitness to female Unfitness, therefore.
Seeing that the ape is vastly more adapted than is man to natural
environment, it is obvious that the trend of adaptation to environment,
far from having been along lines of evolving ape to man, must have been
always, on the contrary, impelling reversion of the human to the
ape-type. Darwin relates how he and Huxley, watching some boys bathing,
"marvelled over the fact, seeming especially strange when they are no
longer disguised by clothes, that human beings should dominate over all
other creatures and play the wonderful part they do on earth."
Hugo de Vries says: "Natural Selection (whereof Adaptation is _modus
operandi_) ... does not single out the best variations, but simply
destroys the larger number of those which are, from some cause or other,
unfit for their present environment. In this way it keeps the strains up
to the required standard."
While Hoffding states explicitly: "Adaptation and Progress are not the
same."
Clearly there are Dual Principles operating in progressive development;
one adapting the organism to environment, the other adapting it to the
Typal model inherent in species.
II
In the male of stock impoverished by artificial conditions of
civilisation, the transition to manhood is attended likewise by some
languors, physical and mental. New powers are being developed and
occasion more or less strain upon the constitution--a strain wherewith
our present-day masters and pastors, in their zeal of intensive culture,
reckon far too little. In healthy boys this is in no way comparable,
however, with the constitutional stress which adolescence causes in
healthy girls. The youth continues to wax in strength of brain and body.
The arrest, or involution, normal to the girl, does not occur in him.
While she becomes gentler and more tranquil, by reason of a new poise in
her of mind and body, he becomes forceful and restless by reason of a
new release in him of energy. Yet though he gains in strength of brain
and body by this further differentiation of his resources into concrete
faculty and virile energy, he lapses notably in organisation. From the
supple, fine-skinned boy--clear-eyed, sweet-voiced, womanly almost in
refinement and comeliness--he grows large and hard and muscular; more or
less sinewy and rough-hewn, according as he is, or is not, manly of
type. His skin loses its fine grain and smoothness, becoming coarser and
hirsute; thus reverting, in degree, to the inferior, animal grade of
skin. His voice falls nearly an octave, lapsing from sweetness and
purity to gruffness and volume. Obviously--although all this being
normal, the male has a virile charm and handsomeness of his own--man's
is notably a less highly and subtly-evolved organisation than is
woman's.
In the boy, is seen a progressive adaptation of body and brain to
environment, in order to fit him for his man's task of coping with and
advancing the conditions of life, material and ethical. And for this,
the more delicate and sensitive woman-physique, demanding more of vital
conservation for its upkeep, would be a handicap.
Biological adaptation for his part in reproduction occurs too. But the
male development at this epoch is pre-eminently one of adaptation to
environment; equipping him with bone and muscle, brain and enterprise,
aggressiveness, initiative and energy. Racially indispensable as the
reproductive function is in him, it is obviously incidental and
subordinate to his general development.
The girl's transition to womanhood is seen, on the contrary, to be one
almost entirely of adaptation, physiological and psychical, to the
functions of wifehood and child-bearing. Her growth ceases. She loses,
in place of gaining, nerve and muscle-power. While, in becoming
emotional, her changed mentality unfits far more than it fits her to
cope with life at first hand; with life unadapted, that is, and herself
unshielded by the male. Her intelligence at eighteen is normally less
keen and active--although of higher and more subtle quality and
trend--than it had been at twelve.
Indications of Nature which point unmistakably to diametrically
different modes of culture and of training for the sexes, and, in
consequence, to wholly different applications of their respective powers
and aptitudes in every department of life.
In the boy, the Male-traits receive, with adolescence, a great influx of
energy; wholly dominating the Woman-traits which had made him more or
less a feminine creature.
More and more each day, the potential virile in his every cell asserts
itself in structure and in function; dominating the Woman-traits
inherent in him. He waxes big and strong of body; restless and active of
mentality. And the less, within normal limits, virility has been
prematurely forced in him by too hard strain of mind or body, the better
for the evolution of his manhood. Unless the Woman-traits have been
unduly drilled and hardened out of him, they will now refine, inspire
and fructify his awakening masculine powers. The too hard struggle for
existence put, by necessity, on boys of the poorer classes, and, in the
higher classes, forced on sensitive boys called upon, too young, to
fight for survival in the semi-savage communities that public schools
are, hardens them too soon and too summarily, and thus frustrates their
best development.
It is said that there is no atrocity a boy-community will not commit.
In this stage of development, the moral consciousness of the _genus_ is
at low ebb. The accentuation of Male-traits now occurring occasions a
recrudescence of primal instincts. And the collective atmosphere such
recrudescence engenders in a boy-community, marooned in school-life
apart from the refining, softening influences of home and womenkind, is
only too often an evil and a demoralising one. Boarding-schools should
be abolished; good day-schools substituted.
More than at any other phase of his existence, the masculine needs now
the Woman-influences from _without_; because the Woman-traits _within_
are, for a period, submerged beneath a surge of Maleness.
Notwithstanding these obvious truths, however, during the years when
body and mind should be adapting gradually, consciously and
subconsciously, to the social environment wherein their lives are to be
passed; when the mental horizon should be expanding simultaneously with
the expanding intelligence, when the moral should be rising to the new
demands upon it, boys are imprisoned in scholastic institutions, where
they are hemmed in by routine and restrictions, in an atmosphere of
puerile conceptions, puerile traditions, puerile conventions and
associations; their chief outlet and respite the narrow rules and the
narrowing absorptions of so-called "Games," supervised by martinet
Games-masters.
And then, when we bring them to the field of life, we are surprised to
find many of them unintelligent, unadapted, unadaptable; resourceless,
inept and incompetent. Cooped during those impressionable years in a
wholly artificial environment, when confronted by the world of living
actualities, which is not ruled by similar narrow restrictions, nor
shaped upon the artificial forms and puerile misconceptions in which
their young ductile natures have been run and have set--they show
themselves wholly unfitted for life, with its varied, difficult and
complex conditions and adjustments. They have become, in point of fact,
mentally and temperamentally "provincial."
The good form which some of them acquire is derived less from
school-ethics or training than from an aristocratic strain of boys with
whom they have been associated. And being acquired, when it is not the
form of their own social order, it appears only too frequently as a
counterfeit; engendering insincerity and snobbishness, and marring
individuality.
It has seemed to me that, in both sexes, the first seven years of
life--during which native faculty and attribute are evolving at great
pace--are a phase in which the Recessive, or anabolic, mode,
conservative of the resources and vitalising of the tissues, is in the
ascendant. The true child of both sexes is normally, during these years,
a typification of the Woman-traits; receptive, plastic, gentle,
affectionate, trustful, intuitive, emotional; quickly fatigued, quickly
recuperative; more or less lovely and angelic. In this phase, native
intuitive faculty makes children sometimes phenomenal; lightning
calculators, musical prodigies, precocious poets, artists. So too, their
marvellously rapid apprehension of the complex meanings and
implications of life betokens Supra-conscious mentality.
At seven years old and thence onward to fourteen, a male, and katabolic,
phase sets in. Phenomenal faculty vanishes. Concrete development of
body, brain and energy proceeds apace. The child becomes active,
intelligent, enterprising, inquiring. The boy becomes appreciably male;
the girl more or less of a hoyden, more male, indeed, than she is
normally at any other period of her existence. Unless, that is, this
hoyden phase is rendered permanent in her by masculine training.
At fourteen, with the evolution of sex, the sex of boy and girl, with
its respective opposite modes of constitution and of function, makes for
marked development, each along its characteristic lines.
III
The French have a saying: _La femme est une malade_. Woman is not, of
course, an invalid. Nature does not fashion invalids. Woman's
organisation is normally delicate and sensitive and highly strung,
because of its special and complex sex-differentiation. She resembles
the child, in that howsoever healthful (in proportion, indeed, as she is
normal and healthfully organised) her cells of brain and body re-act
resiliently and vitally to all the agencies, physical and psychical,
about her.
This sensitive re-activity is not only a sign, it is, as well, a
_source_ of health. Because the greater delicacy and sensitiveness of
organisation which characterise women and children, resulting in their
quick re-activity to deleterious conditions, secure a permanently more
highly-vitalised condition of body than is the case with man, whose
cells are less sensitive, more tolerant of fatigue, of cold, and of
other injurious agents. Immunity against injurious factors is the
parent of degeneracy. Life being re-activity, in terms of living
processes, to the factors of environment, such immunity entails loss of
vital re-activity to _vivifying_ as much as against deteriorative
factors.
We complain that Nature, in place of making our bodies of cast iron, so
to speak, makes them, on the contrary, vulnerable at every point. The
reason is, surely, that the less we are constituted like cast iron--the
more vital and complex, intelligent and responsive, our tissues are,
accordingly--the more conducive to change and advance (because the more
sensitively re-active to subtler and psychical stimuli) they are
likewise. We cannot be, at the same time, hardy and obtuse, yet
exquisitely sensitive. Living tissue-cells are characterised, beyond all
other developments, by a range of contrasting abilities. An arm serves
as softest cushion for a child's head, or, by stiffening of its muscles,
becomes rigid as steel. An eye that sees for miles will focus to a
pin-point. But being, as we are, still in the making, our tissues
necessarily have limitations--and the defects, accordingly, of both
their sets of qualities. High sensitiveness of function is necessarily
attended by corresponding complexity and delicacy of structure. Such
structural delicacy obliges us to adapt environment to its complexities.
It is thus an incentive to progress.
It obliges us, as well, to moderate our activities, and, by thus
restricting the output of our cruder powers, our resources are husbanded
and directed into higher channels.
The purpose of the complex differentiations which handicap the
adolescent girl is obvious. The curving bones, the expanding pelvis, the
rounded contours, the inhibited muscles, the languors and recurring
disabilities, are designed to restrict activity, physical and mental.
Physicists tell us that the Conservation of Motion and the Conservation
of Energy are one and the same thing. This must be true, as well, of
_Vital_ Energy. The conservation of Vital Activity subtends the
Conservation of Vital resources. The new developments are by no means
incidental merely to the new processes; they are an integral part of The
Plan. In half-closing the doors on avenues of active output, Nature
conserves the Woman-powers for more intrinsic use. Every brain and
body-cell is raised thereby to higher levels both of constitution and of
function.
As stored _mechanical_ energy becomes transformed into the higher form
of _electrical_ energy, so the power stored in Woman's anabolic cells is
raised to higher evolutionary forms. Thus she becomes fitted to be
mother of the Child--the blossom of the Race. Her part in the child will
contain the inherence of these new higher evolutionary values, as the
father's part in it will contain the inherence of the concrete powers he
has developed. And while her body spontaneously raises all its issues in
order to fit her to be a Mother, so it develops powers and functions
adapting her to serve as soft environment, physical and attributal, for
the rearing of her child.
All this complex differentiation and evolution are designed, as well, to
adapt woman for the love-passion, and to draw and bind her mate to her.
And Nature has so cunningly interwoven the two plans and the two
developments that, for the most part, those physical traits and
emotional attributes which best qualify for motherhood most potently
attract and closely attach the woman's mate to her.
Woman is "_une malade_," because, throughout the more than thirty years
of her potential maternity, she suffers periodically those which,
biologically speaking, are _minor childbirths_; each entailing a cycle
of complex physiological processes, with more or less considerable
constitutional and nervous stress, debility and incapacitation. Nature
exacts from her this recurring toll to Life and to the Race, not only to
preserve in her, in healthful and efficient function, the power and
mechanism of actual child-bearing, but (only second in importance)
perpetually to recruit her emotional womanhood and wifehood.
When girls in course of developing the maternal function, with all its
attendant psychical implications, are strained by athletics, by
over-culture or industrial exhaustion, the vital resources are so
diverted from the evolution of this function as to cause incapacitation
in them, partial or complete, for wifehood, and for the bearing of sound
and fine offspring. Sterilisation, absolute or partial, is induced; with
dwarfed structure, blighted emotions and warped instincts. Even in women
who have developed normally, disease or atrophy of reproductive organs
may follow constitutional strain or undue effort.
Toll to Life, in genesis of potential lives, is exacted likewise from
the male. It is a reflex in him of the vital maternal function, inherent
in his Woman-side. And this perpetual Life-tax upon his energies so
reduces these as to temper his physical and nervous activities and his
bent for individuation, and thus inhibits him from squandering his whole
potential of Life-power in volitional output. Thus is preserved in him
that normal proportion between Individuation and Perpetuation which
Herbert Spencer describes as existing in inverse ratio to one another.
Thus also is preserved in him the normal mental balance between the Male
and the Female departments of his dual brain. Men muscularly or
intellectually overactive become lopsided and ineffective; restless and
wasteful of their forces, chill and sterile of temperament; having lost
that fine fructifying calm wherein creative potential is engendered for
concrete achievement; having lost also that equipoise of faculty
whereon mental and moral stability depend.
* * * * *
The Life-tax levied on the male is incomparably less, however, than that
exacted of the female.
IV
It is because of their _anabolic_ mode of tissue-cells, less wasteful
upon the material plane, that girls and women normally require less food
than boys and men do. Notwithstanding that their bodies are more highly
nourished than are those of males. Healthy young women continue to be
plump and pretty, healthful and active on bread-and-butter, fruits and
sweetmeats. While mannish women, whose physiology has deteriorated to
the _katabolic_, disruptive and forceful, male mode, possess frequently
the hungry appetites of men; not only for food but for drink. And yet
withal, they are lean and for the most part plain, and poorly nourished.
With the wane in her of the _anabolic_ mode of cellular conservation,
and the release thereby of vital resources which, sealed up in her
tissue-cells at adolescence, remain invested in organisation during her
years of possible motherhood, woman in whom sex is not highly developed
reverts more or less (as does the constitutionally-deteriorated oyster)
to the masculine type. She lapses to a _katabolic_ metabolism.
At middle-age, accordingly, provided she be still healthy, she derives a
considerable accession of energy, physical and intellectual. Now for the
first time relieved of the Life-tax upon her resources, her powers are
released from bond, and become more fully available for individuation
and personal activity.
At the same time, with this conversion of constitutional investment to
the form of current and available energy, there occurs a
proportional--sometimes a very signal--impoverishment of organisation;
and, after a phase of recrudescent emotionalism, a cooling and thinning
of passional feeling. Because such realisation of invested vital capital
is inevitably the precursor of decline. Thenceforward her cells, no
longer sustaining their high evolutionary states, generate more of
concrete energy, and endow her with increased powers of action. But
their conditional deterioration is manifest in general deterioration of
physique, of looks, and frequently of health.
Not seldom, indeed, when her constitutional reserves had been previously
depleted by over-expenditure, physical or mental, the cell-deterioration
of this epoch lapses to serious disease or disability; to rheumatism,
gout, cancer or other perverted forms.
With the constitutional and biological changes come psychical changes
too. In women in whom sex is not highly-specialised, middle-age entails,
with its quasi-masculine physical phase, quasi-masculine mental traits.
They may become strenuous and combative, sometimes difficult and
domineering. Perhaps they attach themselves to political and ethical
"anti"-movements, as arena for their new combativeness, their augmented
intellection, and increased physical activity.
In the most womanly of women also (as in men at a later epoch) there
occurs at this period a natural transposition of the parental traits of
Altruism and Chivalry to the impersonal plane; moving them to mother and
father the world in general, by way of Charity, Philanthropy, Reform.
V
Is it not waste of power and faculty, is asked, for able and cultured
women to permit their development, physical and mental, to adapt to the
simple requirements of a nursery?
Uncultured and more or less brainless women of an inferior class, it is
said, should be adequate, surely, to cope with the minds and the needs
of these immature beings.
Immature they are, in truth. But they are nevertheless strangely
complex; exquisitely sensitive. And they are men and women in the
making--or the marring. Behind the eyes of any child that looks at you
in dumb and wistful impotence to express itself, to defend itself, to
provide and to care for itself, may lie the mind, in bud, of a
Shakespeare, of a Newton, of a Shelley; of a Florence Nightingale, a
Mrs. Somerville, a Charlotte Brontë.
How the most ordinary child, indeed, of cultured parents suffers acutely
in feeling, and deteriorates in mind and character under the regime of
blundering rebuffs, scoldings and misapprehensions, he meets at every
turn in the nursery ruled by a crude, hard woman of the labouring
classes!
How, when they have grown older in years but are still only young in
understanding, all youth suffers from the shallow motherhood that was
kind, maybe, and helpful to it in its childhood, but fails it utterly in
the stress and difficulties of its teens!
True motherhood is the greatest of the Creative Arts; Mother-craft, the
most vital and complex of the Sciences. Life has never received more
than a tithe of that which Nature destined for it, owing to lack of
mother-nurture. Genius has never fruited to full bloom and potence,
because the mothers have so seldom realised the greatness of their task.
Nearly all the records of childhood that writers have given us are
annals of bewildered mental suffering and of moral torture, which have
left their evil mark in injured health or warped mentality--not seldom
in both.
The home, with all the intuitive wisdoms, the powers and sympathies and
the maternal ministry of a true mother, is indispensable to the nurture
of Individualism, and thereby to the evolution of human character and
faculty.
The true home is the temple of the soul. Souls are exquisitely
sensitive, infinitely shy. And only in the warm and fostering
atmosphere of kindred beings do they find courage to unfold in living
attribute. Every home should be a unique environment, pre-eminently
specialised and adapted to the evolution of the young and tender
nursling-individualities shaping in it. To uproot these prematurely from
their native soil and transplant them in an alien one, is to blight
nascent talent and to warp character. For the reason that it
necessitates too early individuation, with precocious development of
self-protective and other qualities of worldly expedience.
To plant out the shivering, exquisitely sensitive seedling, the human
Babe, in the chill, communal atmosphere of a Crèche or other
institution, is as inhuman a social crime as it is an inhuman social
crime to defraud its mother of her highest evolutionary impulse and
function in the nurture of her little one--a responsibility she has
incurred, a privilege she has earned by right of her maternity.
In her nursery, the mind of woman opens new windows of illumination,
glimpses new vistas of thought and emotion, higher and lovelier
apprehensions of the profounder meanings of Life. In her nursery, her
eyes learn tenderness, her voice sweet modulation, her speech new purity
and fondness.
In good and happy homes where young persons, in place of being banished
to schools, grow up in the natural bracing and inspiring atmosphere of
parental influence and affection, Sex evolves new issues, in those
attractions and sympathies of its Contrasting Traits which are evoked by
the relations of mother and son, of father and daughter, of brother and
sister.
Under modern conditions, in which children and young persons renew
intermittent acquaintance merely with parents and brothers and sisters
during brief holiday visits--returning home, with every added term of
absence, more and more strangers to their kin, their personalities and
interests increasingly detached from those of the home circle--such
potent and inspiring developments of sex are vanishing.
A wide gulf, truly, separates from their fathers these modern
self-centred, self-opinionated young sportswomen and over-academised
girls. The charming filial relation, engendering new and tender
sex-amenities in the daughter's hero-worship and reliance on the manhood
of her sire, in the father's protective chivalry and recruital of his
youth in the company and interests of his young daughter, is waning
toward extinction. The vast majority of fathers feel dismally
constrained, indeed, and out of countenance in the presence of their
girls--so smart and sophisticated, so superior, critical and
self-sufficing are our latter-day school and college-maidens. For the
most part, their own daughters are the last among womenkind to whom men
turn, to reap something of the freshness and fairness of the younger
generation they have sown and laboured for.
While the up-to-date mother aspires to no higher or more beautiful place
in her boy's life and affections than that of "good chum!"
CHAPTER III
THE EXTINCTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE
"We may outrun,
By violent swiftness, that which we run at,
And lose by over-running."
_Shakespeare._
I
How now, in detail, does the Feminist creed lend itself to the
biological developments and indications of Nature described in the last
chapter?
Unfortunately, as already intimated, it ignores, violently combats at
every turn, and only too frequently wholly frustrates them.
Feminist leaders have shown themselves deplorably indifferent alike to
biological and to sociological law. Losing sight of the truth that the
intrinsic and eternal function of Humanity is Parenthood--and more
particularly Motherhood--they have made, all along the line, not for the
true emancipation of woman but for her commercialisation, merely.
The economic viewpoint has obsessed them wholly. Not to free woman from
disabilities under which her womanhood, her wifehood, and her motherhood
were suffering, but to convert her powers into industrial and marketable
commodities has been the aim. That higher ideals are bound up with
economics, is true. The rights of honest self-support and adequate wage,
leading to kindlier, healthier and happier life-conditions, are, by
improving constitution and character, important assets on the side of
Evolution. But by far the most urgent and important consideration in
economics, as these affect women, is the fundamental biological
principle that, because their greatest of all values lie in their
evolutionary and racial endowments, rather than in their concrete and
commercial efficiencies, the sex requires and is entitled to such more
lenient and privileged social and industrial adjustments as admit of due
quota of its vital resources, physical and mental, remaining conserved
in the potential. In place of these being differentiated and expended to
the degree natural to man, and exacted of him by his prescribed rôle in
progress.
In direct and violent opposition to Nature, the Feminist system does
everything possible, however, to frustrate that normal phase of arrest
along lines of concrete development whereon the higher evolution of
woman--and in woman, of the Race--depends. Just at the age when Nature
locks the door upon her constitutional resources, for the purpose of
evolving these to higher organisation, the schools and industries do a
strenuous best to keep the door forcibly open, and to wrest the
resources from the storehouse of potential. With a view to fitting woman
to compete with the male, in whom such arrest of individuation, in the
racial interests, is occurring to vastly less degree.
In all ways, the natural languors and disabilities of the girl's
adolescent phase are vigorously combated. The unfortunate young
developing creature is exhorted, spurred--compelled by rigid rule,
indeed (whatsoever her physiological disabilities), to take her part in
strenuous exertions; hard drill, cricket, hockey, football; with the aim
of developing masculine muscles where feminine muscles should be. At the
same time, her brain is forced, crammed and exploited by perpetual
mental tasks; by competitive examinations, or by some or another strain
of specialism, intellectual or industrial. The result is that she is
forcibly precluded from evolving to those higher, subtler modes of body
and of mind, which are the essence, the charm and the inspiration of
the sex; and the model of the Race to be.
Our school-girls and work-girls, in whose already impoverished, or
degenerate, bodies this battle for their resources between Nature and
Culture (or Industrialism) is waged--the one to make them normal, the
other to make them abnormal--are all more or less in states of disease;
are chlorotic, anæmic, neurotic, dyspeptic, hysterical; or suffer from
ailments special to their sex. While some are sturdy and florid and
buxom (prematurely middle-aged), more are neurasthenic and attenuated,
ill-nourished, spectacled, breastless, hipless, pale or pimply; are
restless, emotionless, joyless, cynical, discontented. In but few
are found the thrill and joy, the pulse and spring and natural
enthusiasms of healthy, happy young creatures in the dawn and grace of
maidenhood. Such as are charming and pretty possess these natural
woman-characteristics only too often in fragile and weed-like
form. The constitutional degeneracy of some shows in precocious
sex-development--all precocity being degeneracy, development too
rapid and exhaustive, and entailing therefore flimsy and unstable
tissue-cells, faulty functioning and premature decline.
A proportion, one is thankful to say, are normal and healthful and
charming, endowed with the attributes and graces, personal and mental,
for which Nature is shaping in the sex. Others are, biologically
speaking, mere lamentable "spoiled copies"; amazons of the hockey,
football, tennis or hunting-fields, only just distinguishable in general
characteristics from the male, and lacking more or less wholly in
womanly psychology and aptitude, and in all the fairer and nobler
attributes of their sex. Still others, although handsome and finely
female of physique, are "splendidly null" in respect of the emotions,
and of the other subtler and psychical developments of natural
womanhood.
The Greeks, with their intuitive apprehension, pourtrayed both Athene,
goddess of Intellect, and Artemis, goddess of Sports, as sexless,
passionless, unwedded and childless; scorners of men, devoid of all
womanly impulse and sentiment. (Strangely enough, as though anticipating
the argument of this book, Athene is described as having sprung, in full
life, from her father's brain. While Scripture tells of Eve derived from
Adam's side.)
In _The New System of Gynæcology_, the latest and most authoritative
treatise by eminent specialists in women's diseases, the following
passage occurs, under heading, "Derangement of the Sex-Characteristics":
"It is our belief that the more truly feminine a woman is, psychically
and physically, in instinct and in performance, so much the more
complete and normal will be the functions of her mind and body. We have
already alluded to inverted instincts. And in the perversion of
functions and characteristics (physical phenomena) we may observe all
grades from almost complete masculinity in appearance, _with the
disappearance of the feminine functions_, to the lesser degrees of
disordered function and characteristics."
II
Nature is so complex, yet so subtly consistent in her workings, that
the neuter-state shows in the faces of many of our women as the
typical look of the mule--cross between horse and ass, a creature
incapable of reproduction. In the eyes of young women of strenuous
pursuits--academic, industrial, or athletic, this characteristic sterile
glint, part boldness, part antagonism, is common.
The normal condition of woman is attended by the normal expression of
woman. The womanly biology entails the womanly psychology. And modesty
is one of the natural female secondary Sex-characteristics, attendant
upon healthy structural development and function. The hard, bold
glance--the "mule"-look--of some masculine girls and women by no means
necessarily implies conscious immodesty. It is mainly biological and
subconscious; sign of an attribute missing, as result of deterioration
of the function in which the attribute is normally rooted.
With reduced values of that Reproductive function it is modesty's
province to defend, the attribute of modesty declines.
The girls and women of old Sparta, as ignorant of biology as women are
to-day, made a cult of athletics--good and zealous, but mistaken
patriots!--for the express purpose of mothering a fine, athletic race.
These high and praiseworthy aims failed signally. For Sparta, with all
her zeal of racial improvement (so drastic in its methods that she
killed her weakly girl-infants) fell upon decline and degeneracy. Noble
civilisation that she had been, she died in decadent corruption.
And showing the relation between athletic pursuits and extinction of
womanly qualities, the Spartan cult of Maleness led to such decay of
modesty that it became the custom for women to run with the men in The
Games, naked as they. A custom that sprang less from actual immodesty
than from lapse of that normal Sex-specialisation, whence arises the
normal sex-consciousness which engenders wholesome reserve between the
sexes. Modern developments of a similar extinction of womanly modesty
are seen in the conduct of latter-day girls and women in public parks
and elsewhere; in the unseemly familiarities of mixed bathing; in the
decadent, unduly-familiar or frankly indecent dances, and the frankly
indecent modes of dress just now in vogue. As too in that so-called
"candour" which permits women of culture to talk openly of the most
intimate physiological functions, and, without sense of shame, to
discuss across the dinner-table prurient scandals and other unsavoury
topics.
The mystery of the creative powers of Life occulted in her has ever
invested woman, for man, with glamour and reverence, enhancing a
thousandfold her charm and appeal to his chivalry and tenderness. In
stripping herself of womanly reserve and dignity, alike in demeanour and
dress, she shatters her mystery for him and forfeits her supremest claim
upon his manhood; while robbing him of his fairest illusions and most
inspiring incentives.
III
In cases of sex-transformation in the lower creatures, the lapse to a
masculine type is found to be accompanied by atrophy of reproductive
glands. As recorded in a previous chapter, investigations by Rörig show
that when the ovaries of female deer atrophy from any cause, male
antlers develop.
Mannish sex-characteristics in women are as abnormal and as unnatural,
and arise from a similar cause as do male antlers in female deer.
With the wane of parental power, normal to middle-age, there occurs a
like--but in such case a natural--atrophy of glands. And this it is that
causes some women to acquire masculine traits at this epoch.
Degrees, greater or less, of such a decline (natural to middle-aged
women) are being artificially, and prematurely, induced in our girls and
young women. Some of them become actually sterilised, and are wholly
incapable of reproduction. The greater number are only partially
sterilised. They are capable still of being mothers. But the function,
in place of being the crown and the fulfilment of their natures, is a
disability; is more or less of a morbid process, indeed. And their
offspring are more or less deteriorate. Not a few, after
marriage--called upon to fulfil functions the resources whereof have
been sapped by other and abnormal activities--become invalids; a number
require surgical treatment.
Non-development, similar atrophy, or other deterioration of the mammary
glands precludes the vast majority of our young mothers from nourishing
their babes--a deplorable injury to these as well as to the mothers
themselves; physical and psychical function being closely and subtly
allied.
Women who fence or play hockey and other rough games during girlhood,
become, owing to such degenerative atrophy, incapacitated for lactation.
The following is an interesting example of the manner in which cruder
and lower-grade power may be increased at the cost of higher faculties.
A patient told me that, having been naturally a poor walker--two miles
having been her limit--she had determined to train herself out of this
which she regarded as an infirmity. Accordingly, by persistent practice,
she succeeded in raising her walking-power to ten miles daily. She
mentioned incidentally--seeing no relation of cause and effect--that,
for several years (the years during which her walking-powers had been
increasing) _she had become progressively deaf_.
That she had been, in point of fact, sapping the potential of the
complex, invaluable faculty of hearing, in order to equip her
leg-muscles, was confirmed for me a few weeks later, when I
read of a number of cyclists, who, after one of those deplorable
pacing-exhibitions common to-day, came in, one and all, stone deaf: a
consequence of nervous strain. The deafness in these cases passed off
with rest. But it is easy to understand that from such temporary
functional depletions frequently recurring, permanent structural
deterioration must result inevitably. Thus it is that over-use, in
sports and games, of the muscles of shoulder and chest, occasions
atrophy of mammary glands.
By no other way than by artificially inducing in them a premature
(partial) climacteric, by perverting their young organisations to the
quasi-masculine type of the middle-aged woman, and thereby releasing,
for available output, power which should have remained conserved for
many years in organisation, can women be fitted for masculine pursuits.
And such sterilisation, where it is not producing actually diseased and
degenerate offspring, is producing a pitiful race of pallid and
enfeebled babes and children; dyspeptic and spectacled,
adenoid-afflicted, unchildlike and generally deteriorate.
That other factors contribute to the wave of Racial decline now menacing
our modern civilisations, great and small, is true. Yet mothers of fine
vital potential are able to counteract and to minimise the effects of
constitutional disease in the other parent to degrees but little
realised. Because such mothers are so lamentably rare.
IV
It is the natural release of vital forces, consequent upon the normal
wane of mother-power at middle-age, that has been mainly responsible for
the errors of the Woman's Movement.
In all its aims and methods it has been essentially a Middle-aged
Woman's movement. There are no young ideals in it; no concessions to
youth, to love, to graciousness or sentiment; none to wifehood or to
motherhood. It has been, for the most part, a grim, dour striving after
neuter standards, neuter models, neuter efficiencies, neuter lives and
neuter recompenses.
Identity of brain and muscle, of aims and claims, of games and
avocations; equal rights and equal work and equal pay have been the
watchwords of its propaganda. "Fair play and no privileges!" its
promoters rigorously demand for these poor weedy girl-neurotics who,
beyond all else, require industrial concessions and the human clemency
of adequate rest and leisure, to allow of normal and healthful
development of their growing brains and bodies.
Pioneered by strenuous, middle-aged women--with the best intentions, be
it said--Feminists have adopted the fatal policy of sternly impressing
the model of their own quasi-masculine middle-age as the standard of
youthful development. Without, for a moment, suspecting that such
wresting of male energies and efficiencies from its young women-victims
has inevitably entailed upon them degrees of that climacteric of
womanhood which is the herald of decline. On the contrary, this
middle-aged, quasi-masculine state, because of its release of power for
sterner purposes, has been hailed as a triumph of Emancipation and of
higher education; proof positive that woman is not man--only because she
has lacked opportunity to become so.
In point of fact, these unfortunate young creatures have been, and are
being all the while ever further despoiled of their youth, of their sex,
and their fair heritage of life and happiness, of function and of
faculty. And the Race has been robbed of priceless living wealth in
human health and capability.
The breasts of these despoiled have shrunk, in place of blossoming.
There are no founts of altruistic life in them. Never will they be
capable of nurturing babes, or of contributing their mysterious due to
psychical attribute. The pelvis remains narrow and puerile. Never can it
serve as hostel for a babe of normal, healthful type.
In the vast majority of modern girls and women, the reproductive organs
are structurally immature or functionally defective.
Dr. Gaillard Thomas, an eminent American gynæcologist, estimated, some
years since, that only about 4 per cent. of American women proper were
physiologically fitted to become wives and mothers.
The United States have been and are all the while deriving fresh influx
of vigour and vitality in stock, from the continuous immigration of
simpler and more vitalised peoples. But American women proper have never
recovered from the strain and hardships of adaptation to a new
environment, which settlers in alien and undeveloped countries
necessarily encounter; the deteriorative influences whereof are shown in
constitutional impoverishment of the parent-stock. This is true, as
well, of our Colonial kin. Not only the strain of acclimatisation, but
too the hard and rough life-conditions women have to cope with in
undeveloped lands are responsible for the constitutionally-debilitated,
or, on the other hand, for the rawer and less highly-organised racial
types found in new settlements.
In the United States, moreover, the standards of culture and of training
are pre-eminently artificial. Democratic sentiment and material
prosperity induce persons of working-class biological organisation to
over-tax their children's brains and constitutions by forcing these to
the educational standards and culture of stock that has evolved, by
generations of higher nurture, to higher evolutionary grades. The
"newly-rich," eager for their families to profit (as they regard it) by
opportunities denied themselves, invariably commit this radical error of
over-estimating academic education and social accomplishment. They fail
to realise that one can no more attain culture than one can acquire
breeding in a single generation. It takes _three_ generations of
culture--of comparative ease and freedom from the strain of industrial
labour and living--to evolve the crude muscular arm of a working woman
into the shapely, refined arm of a gentlewoman. And so it must be with
brains. In nineteen cases out of twenty, a 'Varsity education serves as
irreparable injury rather than as benefit to a working-class youth,
depleting health or warping character as it inevitably does.
The strain of living above the evolutionary level is exhaustive and
harmful, physically and mentally, both to individuals and to stock. The
prudence of apportioning education to the grade of evolutionary
development is strikingly shown in the cases of negroes, who, when
over-taxed by the education normal to white races, not seldom become
blind or consumptive. And always the morale deteriorates. The forcing
upon our own labouring-classes of an education above that suited to
their natural powers has contributed largely to the constitutional
deterioration and the neurasthenia common among them to-day.
One of the factors of modern Labour-unrest, indeed, is the physical
unfitness of debilitated and neurotic working-men to cope capably and
cheerfully with the tasks of earlier and sturdier generations.
The urgent need of all our over-civilised races is not more education
but more _native faculty_.
Every form of disease and degeneracy, physical and mental, is rampant. A
well-known authority on brain-diseases warns us that if mental
defectiveness continues to increase at its present rapid pace, soon we
shall be unable to support the asylums required to accommodate and
segregate the unfortunate victims thereof. They must remain at large--to
perpetuate and multiply indefinitely their terrible afflictions.
Yet how is it possible that such weedy, half-sterilised creatures as are
so many of our modern mothers, should bear sound and sane and vigorous
offspring?
Inherited debilitation and defect are further aggravated by present-day
educational methods.
Our modern rendering of the training of the young is the _straining_ of
the young.
Developing creatures should never be allowed to over-use function or
faculty. Because to over-tire an immature faculty is to deplete its
vital resources of development. Nor should young developing creatures be
permitted to do anything too strenuously or for too long a time.
Narrowness and mental warp result inevitably from too early and too long
periods of concentration in one direction, of the ductile shaping brain.
In defiance, nevertheless, of this first principle of rearing, boys and
girls, after the morning's brain-work, are kept at strenuous games for
hours in succession.
Body and mind, after having been cramped between the covers of
text-books, now are cramped within the narrow rules and rigid form of
such miscalled "games," supervised by over-keen experts--the whole
business exacting sustained muscular tension, temperamental excitement
and competitive nervous strain. The powers are stretched to win some
goal, in place of being unbent in leisure and in pleasure. True play is
spontaneous enjoyment of the moment, not fierce concentration upon
goals. This latter induces excitement, which may be pleasurable, but it
entails its tax in reactionary exhaustion. Because of the spur of
competition in them, sports and games, as now rendered, act as powerful
nerve-stimulants that deplete and waste the vital powers.
School-boys and school-girls live, for the most part, in alternating
states of high tension in sports and reactionary languors from the heart
and nervous strain resulting therefrom.
Since sports and athletics became a cult, heart-diseases have increased
by 50 _per cent._ We complain that our young men are limp and
unintelligent, lacking in initiative and enterprise. Apart from the
serious circumstance that, mentally, they have been trained for
cricket, not for life, most of them (to employ their own phrase) have
"gone stale" in heart and brain, in consequence of forced athletics,
long before they come to the momentous business of living. Even their
muscles have wasted, in place of developing. With the result that
instead of being finely-built and graceful, numbers of our youths are
stiff, stoop-shouldered and abnormally attenuated.
Education should aim at keeping young persons fresh and unstrained;
charged with vital energies for growth of mind and body, filled with
zest and enthusiasm for the career before them.
Everywhere, mothers deplore bitterly that they can obtain neither duty,
obedience, nor affection from their girls. Many will not mend their
clothes even; refuse so slight a domestic concession as to arrange
flowers for the home. Lacking the morbid excitement of competitive rough
games, an abnormal craving for which has been artificially created, and
home-tastes extinguished, at school, modern girls are bored and
disaffected save when indulging in sports or in other excitements. The
more delicate, sympathetic, and humanising amenities have no appeal for
them.
All the subtler, vital and inspiring impulses of natural womanhood have
been rudely smothered in tussles of big muscles, in sensational crazes
for making hockey-goals, and similar crude aims, quite alien to natural
girlhood. The recurring stimulus of such, in addition to over-developing
male muscles and proclivities in them, creates both the habit and the
craving for excitement; effects pernicious and demoralising as are those
of all habitual strong nerve-excitants.
It is impossible to exaggerate the cumulative effect of habit upon
disposition--and this particularly upon the plastic, shaping
dispositions of young girls.
Youth is at the mercy of its pastors and its masters, to spoil or to
foster its best growth. We feed the bodies and cram the brains of our
young people, while, in sending them away from the home which is their
natural environment, we starve and dwarf their emotions and affections;
giving these nothing to evoke, nothing to nurture them. The abnormal
cold-heartedness and self-absorption latter-day mothers bewail in their
girls are the inevitable outcome of their unnatural upbringing.
The spectacle of young women, with set jaws, eyes strained tensely on a
ball, a fierce battle-look gripping their features, their hands
clutching some or other implement, their arms engaged in striking and
beating, their legs disposed in coarse ungainly attitudes, is an
object-lesson in all that is ugly in action and unwomanly in mode. The
so-called "tennis-grin," which on many women's faces does duty for
smile, shows how the muscular tension of forceful effort permanently
mars higher attribute. So too, the proverbial quarrelsomeness of
tennis-playing women results from the combative habit of mind. Light and
exhilarating, in place of strenuous competitive exercises, enable girls
to develop their womanhood in healthy structure, efficient function, and
beauty of body and mind. Dancing--the poetry of motion--particularly
conduces to health and to grace. True dancing, that is, not the
acrobatics of the professional dancer, which result in coarsened ugly
limbs and stilted action.
There is a well-known Girls college which makes pre-eminently for the
cult of Mannishness.
And here are seen, absorbed in fierce contest during the exhausting heat
of summer afternoons, grim-visaged maidens of sinewy build, hard and
tough and set as working-women in the forties; some with brawny throats,
square shoulders and stern loins that would do credit to a prize-ring.
All of which masculine developments are stigmata of abnormal
Sex-transformation precisely similar in origin to male antlers in
female-deer; namely, deterioration of important sex-glands, with
consequent obliteration of the secondary Sex-characteristics arising
normally out of the functional efficiency of these.
It has been said that the "hardening" process for children succeeds in
rearing sturdy families, by killing off those of more delicate (and
higher) organisation. And this and other such latter-day schools earn a
reputation for rearing amazons, by so breaking the health and
constitution of their more delicately-constituted members that these are
compelled to withdraw. Following the rule that healthy bodies rebel in
terms of illness against deteriorative conditions, it is the normal and
healthfully-constituted girls who fail beneath such injurious strain.
While organisations less sound of constitutional morale, in place of
sustaining their typal ideals, conform to these deteriorative methods,
and degenerate from higher to lower-grade standards of structure and
function. Precisely as happens to minds when exposed to demoralising
influences.
And to what end is it all? The training of modern young persons should
fit them for Twentieth-Century existence in all its varied, complex and
psychical developments. Yet now-a-days we train our girls as though
their destiny were carpet-beating or the forge, rather than the higher
human amenities. It is not surprising, therefore, that they frequently
play hockey with the higher amenities. So impressionable and mimetic the
sex is, and such its bent toward extremes, that women trained to Sports
comport themselves in after-life as though playing a competitive game. A
mental warp which has been one of the sources of latter-day
strenuousness, as too of that fierce social rivalry which is wrecking
older and fairer ideals and methods of friendship and hospitality.
Over-development of the large and cruder muscles dwarfs those smaller
and more delicate ones which adapt to the softer and subtler departments
of faculty. And while despoiling these smaller muscles which subtend
gentle and delicate artistries, the crude larger ones, hypertrophied by
athletic activities, become alike a burden and a curse to their
possessor. Because not only is their upkeep a continual and a
superfluous tax upon her vital powers, but their hunger for continued
function in further such crude activities afflicts her with turbulent
impulses, for which the more civilised vocations supply no scope. The
militant Feminist movement was as much an explosion of suppressed
muscularity in young women deprived of other outlet for accumulated
muscle-steam, as it was an ebullition of masculine mentality on the part
of its leaders.
Hysteria and other neuroses, obsessing hobbies and crazes, are, more
often than not, morbid and distressing consequences of habits acquired
at school and college, of developing abnormal high-pressures of muscular
and nervous energy. Masculine war-occupations have similarly evoked male
muscularity and mentality in women. So that--War over--they find it
well-nigh unendurable to return to the more refined and humanising
womanly employments of their pre-war days. While on the other hand,
employers are bewailing the rough and coarsened manners, personality and
speech, as too the clumsy movements and ineptitudes of domestic
servants, nurses and others, de-sexed by War-work in respect of the
higher qualities and efficiencies of their sex. Many of these sturdy
motor-drivers, lusty W.A.A.Cs. and strapping Land-girls have lost all
taste as well as aptitude for the finer arts of life and of the home.
Efficient in the handling of plough or gun or lorry, woe to the hapless
babe or invalid subjected to their hard, forceful touch!
V
Language is scarcely emphatic enough to characterise the painful (and
insane) exhibitions of Public-school and College "Sports," in which boys
and young men, whose vital forces are needed beyond all things for
development, may be seen with faces whereon is neither joy of action nor
pride of achievement, but only the pained rigidity of supreme heart and
nervous strain, as they strive for goals that are no test of true
physical fitness, but, on the contrary, prove physical lopsidedness.
In confirmation whereof is the fact that many such athletes die young,
and die suddenly. Or they live the years when men should be still in
their prime--valetudinarian and hypochondriac. The secret of health and
nervous power is the constitutional capacity to _store reserves_ of
vital energy, for expenditure as required. Exhausting sports in youth
engender habits of _over-expenditure_ thereof.
Trials of skill and of strength are admirable spurs to development and
self-discipline. But these should make for excellence in that fine poise
of Mind and Muscle which is the hall-mark of human achievement, not for
extremes of crude brute-force (muscle being the lowest grade of human
powers) which strain the living mechanism; and, straining, leave
inevitably weak and warped links, when not actually snapped ones
therein. The human body is a marvellous and delicate psychological
instrument, not a mere muscular implement. When the hearts of boys are
"sounded" after competitive sports, "murmurs" are heard; showing
valvular incompetency. Temporary in the majority of cases, but none the
less indicative of gravely-weakened states which can but permanently
injure the fine-spun valvular apparatus. "Dilated hearts" caused numbers
of our "fine young athletes" to be rejected as unfit for military duty.
Young men "in training" suffer from albuminuria, showing serious
derangement of the kidney-function; derangement which inevitably entails
such permanent structural deterioration as lapses readily, in after
years, to grave disease.
The fallacy that the excitement of games distracts the attention of
youth from the processes of sex-development has been disproved. While
all athletic boys are not vicious, it is now recognised that the most
vicious are the athletic. The languors of body and mind reactionary upon
the exciting strain of games are unwholesome languors; and breed
unwholesome self-absorptions. A fresh and active imagination, to keep
the mind interested at every turn, is the best of all safeguards. It is
in the imagination, moreover, that higher moral and ideals arise.
It has been said that "the battle of Waterloo was won on the
playing-fields of Eton." It was far more likely won in the pages of
_Jack the Giant Killer_! Because in war, as in most other things, moral
is more potent than muscle. There is, it is true, a moral of Games. But
its outlook and its application are both contracted of range and
artificial of form. Games are useful in forming habits and in exercising
faculties of co-operation in concerted action. But being played in
company with others, and played in obedience to rule and regulation,
they allow no scope for the development of individualism in mind or
character, initiative or resource--outside the narrow boundaries of
cricket-pitch or football field.
By perpetual absorption of the powers in the movements of a ball, the
mind becomes contracted and set in puerile mould, during years when it
should be germinating and expanding in response to the countless varied
and inspiring stimuli and factors of natural environment. Over-keenness
in sports destroys the sense of beauty, love of art and love of Nature.
The grey matter of the brain--the medium of Mind--wherein arise
imagination, inspiration and those noble talents and the noble dreams of
enterprise which make for noble lives--this highest and most complex of
the human tissue-cells becomes starved and atrophied from continued
waste of brain-resources by those lower-grade cerebral motor-tracts
which control and energise the muscles.
The popular impression, both lay and medical, that muscular exertion
supplies rest to the brain and recuperation to the nervous system, is a
sad delusion. One cannot raise a finger without expending brain and
nervous force, the muscles being implements by way of which the brain
transforms purpose into action--being _brain_-implements therefore. So
that brains--and particularly young brains--unduly taxed by muscular
activities are robbed of power to develop or to function in their
intellectual and other higher departments.
If my hypothesis be true, and the right side of the body with its allied
brain-hemisphere is the executive and expenditure side, while the left
is the Life and asset side, it is obvious that excessive brain-work, or
Sports, for which the executive power is supplied by this right side and
its allied brain half, must necessarily deplete and exhaust the left
side, which is the power-house and reservoir of Life and Mind whence the
executive half derives its mental, nervous and vital potential.
It goes without saying that such careful economy of the powers is
superfluous in truly healthful and normally vigorous males. But
latter-day stock has been, for the most part, so far depleted by
generations of neglect of natural law as to require the strictest
husbandry of its vital expenditure, in order to apportion its means to
the best all-round advantage.
Object-lessons in such extremes of athleticism as destroy the normal
balance of the counter-poising Sex-traits have been supplied by War.
The faces--as the natures--of some of our soldiers have become crude,
coarse and deteriorate in intelligence, others abnormally harsh and
fierce; the softer human qualities having been trampled out of them by
stress of militarism, some to degrees of brutalisation and criminality,
even. While a very great number show lined and haggard from heart or
nervous strain.
CHAPTER IV
THE WOMAN BRAIN: ITS POWERS AND DISABILITIES
"_My state is like the lightning's light--
Now it shines forth, and now 'tis gone from sight.
At times, amid the heavens I find my seat;
At others, I am lower than my feet._"
Sa'di (Persian poet).
I
Of what order is this Woman-half of Mind which Feminism seeks to
extinguish?
* * * * *
The cerebral processes appreciable upon the Outer plane, and calculable
by Science, represent no more than a tithe of brain-activities. They are
but a single highly-specialised focus of brain-functioning.
Behind concrete Volition, Intellection, and Action, are the silent,
ceaseless, inner and incalculable workings of innumerable brain-cells
concerned with the mysterious constitution and metabolism of Life, and
its strange, potent relation and correlation with Mind and with
environment; concerned with character and attribute and impulse; with
ancestral vestiges and personal experience; with memories and instincts;
with an infinitude of occulted and imperishable records of previous
terrestrial existences, perhaps; concerned, in a word, with all the
secret springs and complex potences of Individuality; which
differentiates every thought, emotion and action of any human person
from those of every other.
And in these recondite mysteries fructifying in a hundred million
bi-sexual brain-cells, it may be that the subtle counter and
inter-operations of the Man and Woman-traits find their highest
activities, and make for their supremest issues.
Every man and woman is to every other a Sealed Book, whereof no more
than a few pages have been glimpsed--even by those nearest and dearest.
We are Sealed Books to ourselves, indeed, because we do not know the
language we are written in. For of all the muted mysteries spinning
ceaselessly within the silent-functioning cells of twin
brain-hemispheres, Science affords us but the scantest and most sketchy
information. That the grey matter coating the brain-convolutions is the
site of mentality; that the higher the intelligence, the deeper and more
intricate these convolutions are; that disease of a certain area
destroys the power of speech; while disease of some other occasions
paralysis of this or that group of muscles, loss of sensation in this or
that tract of skin. Baldly it states that a portion of a certain
convolution controls a certain movement of a hand. But the thousand and
one emotions and incentives prompting such movement, and differentiating
the resulting action across the extensive range between the noblest
benefaction and the blackest murder, baffle every scientific method.
The processes of Mind and Impulse occur on planes we have no means of
penetrating, possess no appliances whereby to estimate the ethereal
undulations thereof.
What are we? Who are we? Whence are we? Whither do we go?
All is locked within the occulted silence of our hundred million
brain-cells; each of which holds and keeps its own intrinsic secret;
each the mysterious record, it may be, of one of those countless
experiences, forms and phases, ancestral or individual, whereof every
living person is the last resultant. But the Twin-hemispheres, face to
face within the skull, like opposite pages of a book, are key to one
another; one page written in the mystical language of The Past and
Future, the other in the concrete language of The Present.
II
Is that which I surmise to be the _Woman_--and emotional half of brain,
the site of the mysterious province known as The Subconsciousness, into
the strange powers and phenomena whereof scientists are now beginning to
inquire?
Is it the seat of that which Myers designated "The Subliminal
Consciousness," but which might well be called the Supra-Consciousness,
because, in the regions of its higher functioning, it cognises things
beyond power of Concrete Consciousness to apprehend; intuitions,
premonitions, apparitions, telepathic messages?
Is it medium of those inherences and that sub-intelligent emotionalism
known as _Instinct_; which may be regarded as the implanted religion of
rudimentary organisms, leading them upward in blind subconscious
obedience, at sacrifice of their self-interests and disposition?
Respecting the regeneration of the crystalline lens of the eye of a
Triton, Bergson says:
"_Whether we will or no, we must appeal to some inner directing
principle in order to account for this convergence of effects._"
May it not be that this brain-half--seemingly functionless, albeit as
marvellously constructed and constituted as its fellow-half--is, in its
merely organic departments, the agency of such an "inner principle,"
engendering the vital potentials of Life and Evolution, of health, of
nervous recuperation and of biological repair? While in its departments
of Mind, it functions as instinct, as intuition, as inspiration,
aspiration; serves as the subtly receptive medium by way of which The
Divine Influx wells in human attribute; whereby Divine Revelation is
communicated to the concrete brain-half, for interpretation in speech
and in writing. Bergson says also: "The consciousness of a living being
may be defined as an arithmetical difference between _potential_ and
_realised_ activity. It measures the interval between representation and
action." (Duality is indicated.)
The trait essentially distinguishing the human from the brute-mind, is
Intelligent Purpose. And Purpose is the product of Impulse (or Instinct)
and Reason, (or Concrete Intelligence). (Duality again.) Impulse is an
emotion and is feminine. Reason is masculine. Intelligent Purpose may
well be, therefore, a resultant of the co-operation of the feminine half
of the brain, which supplies Impulse, with the masculine half, which
supplies Reason.
Instinct, Professor James, the American psychologist, has pointed out,
exists independently of any recognition of its purpose. While Reason
exists apart from instinct--apart therefore from the emotional impulse
which gives it the personal motive-power to become purpose. Thus, either
mode of brain without the other to supplement it would be incapable of
function.
_Self_-consciousness requires two departments of Consciousness--each of
which is aware of the other. So that a man may judge and restrain
impulses in himself that are contrary to reason and expedience, or, on
the other hand, may choose to sacrifice both reason and self-interest to
emotional impulse, noble and uplifting, or ignoble and debasing.
Describing Intellect as characterised by a natural inability to
comprehend Life, Professor Bergson further says: "Instinct, on the
contrary, is moulded on the very form of Life.... If the consciousness
that slumbers in it should awake, if it were wound up into knowledge
instead of being wound off into action, if we could ask and it could
reply, it would give up to us the most intimate secrets of Life."
Again Duality of mental processes is inferred. As too in the following
passage:
"Instinct is sympathy. If this sympathy could extend its object and also
reflect upon itself, it would give us the key to vital operations--just
as intelligence, developed and disciplined, guides us into Matter....
Intelligence, by means of science ... brings us, and moreover only
claims to bring us, a translation of Life in terms of inertia.... But it
is to the very inwardness of Life that Intuition leads us--by Intuition
I mean instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable
of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely."
III
The phenomena of Hypnotism seem to set the Duality of cerebral processes
beyond dispute.
Dr. George H. Savage, Consulting Physician and late Lecturer on Mental
diseases at Guy's Hospital, in his Harveian Oration, October 1909,
testified as follows to the strangeness and authenticity of hypnotic
evidences:
"Wishing to follow our great master in not accepting anything
without personal investigation, I took advantage of the opportunity
offered by Dr. Wright, to test some of the points of most
importance to which I have referred.
"A gentleman, an engineer, who had been relieved by treatment by
Dr. Wright, was willing to allow him to demonstrate the various
stages of hypnotism and their effects.... He was asked to sit down
and talk quietly about his relationship to hypnotism. Then he was
told to go to sleep. A few passes being made over his head, he
slowly closed his eyes, and in less than a minute he was sleeping
placidly. By the gentle stroking of his left arm this was rendered
inflexible. The pulse was in no way affected; pupils were equal,
but rather larger than before he slept, and were sluggish. He was
slowly aroused (it being well always to recall the subject slowly).
After a talk on general matters he stated that he had no sense of
fatigue in the arm, nor any recollection of anything said and done
during the period of hypnosis.
"He was again, in a similar way, sent to sleep. It was then
suggested that at the end of seven minutes he should lose all power
and sensibility in his right side. He was roused, given a
cigarette, which he smoked while he talked, having no knowledge of
the suggestion which had been made. About five minutes after he had
been roused, _his right arm fell useless by his side, he passing at
the same time into a partial stage of hypnosis_. _This is common
when a post-hypnotic suggestion is being carried out. The whole of
the right side, including the face, was insensitive_; the pupils
were smaller and inactive. He was again slowly aroused, and resumed
smoking, having no feeling of oppression, or recollection of
anything which had been said or done. He was later again
hypnotised, and in that condition he was asked what had been done
formerly. After some hesitation, he, in part, recalled the facts.
"It is interesting to note that though constantly the acts
performed during hypnosis are not recalled when awake, they are
fully remembered on a second hypnosis. We tested his emotional side
by getting him to recall scenes in a comic opera, at which he
heartily laughed but had no knowledge of on waking. While
unconscious, it was suggested that when he woke he should remark
upon a strong odour of violets. He was awakened and offered a
cigarette; but, looking about the room, he asked whence the strong
smell of violets came.
"I inquired as to the revival of long-past impressions, and it
seems that occurrences which took place before his present memory
existed, had been revived and verified. But still more interesting
was his experience in reference to a mathematical formula which he
had forgotten. Being hypnotised, he dictated it, and though when
once more awake he did not remember it, when shown what he had just
dictated he recognised it as the lost formula. This, of course, is
in a way parallel to the solution of difficult problems during
sleep."
Be it observed that when at the end of seven minutes (as had been
"suggested" to him should happen) the subject lost all power and
sensibility in his right side and "_his right arm fell useless by his
side_," he passed "_at the same time into a partial state of hypnosis_.
_This is common_," Dr. Savage adds, "_when a post-hypnotic suggestion is
being carried out_."
Here is strong corroboration of my argument that the right side of the
body, with its allied half-brain, is the agent of Material
Consciousness, of muscular action and of physical sensation, and that it
operates normally in fencing in the higher faculties of Mind from the
outer plane of concrete happenings, as also of interpreting them upon
this plane.
Hypnosis is induced by devices occasioning muscular exhaustion, and thus
temporarily paralysing "voluntary muscles"--muscles, that is, which are
under conscious control. It is induced as well (as in the case cited) by
stroking, and thus putting to sleep the sensory nerves--nerves which
define the patient's consciousness of his material personality. It would
seem that by such inhibition, or paralysis, of the perceptions of the
outer consciousness, faculties of Subconsciousness--even of
Supra-consciousness--are exposed, so that Mind itself may be dealt with
direct.
Every form of insensibility is closely allied with muscular relaxation
or paralysis.
IV
Examples of the operation of the Supra-conscious faculties upon the
concrete plane are supplied by the marvellous feats of "lightning
calculators."
The most intricate mathematical problems--calculations that would call
for lengthy and complicated intellectual processes on the part of expert
mathematicians to work out by ordinary methods--are solved
instantaneously by the genius of such natural "calculators." You cannot
puzzle them; you cannot baffle them. Scarcely have you stated your
problem than they have calmly presented you with the solution. As
Maeterlinck records in his interesting book, _The Unknown Guest_, this
genius for figures developed in Colbourn and Safford at the age of six,
in Mangiamele at ten, in Gauss and Whateley at three. All that and more
than expert mathematicians laboriously acquire by decades of study and
practice, these boy-prodigies achieved by way of native faculty. Such
have not the slightest notion how they arrive at their results. These
are obtained automatically--are products of unconscious cerebration.
Maeterlinck observes of this, that the resultant "appears to rise,
infallible and ready-done, from a sort of eternal and cosmic reservoir
wherein the answer to every question lies dormant."
What is this "eternal and cosmic reservoir" if it be not Mind, or
Supra-consciousness, as distinguished from conscious intellection--a
native intuitive, but undifferentiate, or potential, consciousness which
holds the answer, "infallible and ready-done," to every question.
Truth _Is_. There is but one solution--the true one--of a mathematical
or any other problem of exact science.
A significant fact is that such prodigy boys generally lose their
mysterious faculty "_at the moment when the possessor begins to go to
school_." So soon, that is, as he develops the power of conscious
brain-processes--the power to work out his problems by concrete
methods--his native supra-conscious gift of solving them spontaneously
fails.
Intuition, the woman-mode of arriving at conclusions, lightning quick
and true without reason or reflection, is a kindred potency of Mind.
"When a man," says a French writer, "has laboriously climbed a
staircase, he is sure to find a woman at the top--although she will be
unable to say how she came there!"
He did not add the further truth, that--as with the prodigy boys--the
more you educate her to come at her conclusions by processes of
intellection, the more you rob her of her native woman-gift of
divination.
With the rising level of Faculty engendered by progressive evolution,
woman's powers of intellection have developed too.
While her own mental attributes are themselves of a very high order, and
give to her mentality an inductive subtlety and illumination lacking in
that of the male. And this high quality of brain it is that is now being
extinguished in her by straining her to masculine standards.
Progress awaits, indeed, the new and quickening impulse Life and Faculty
should derive from the Woman-mind fostered along its own inherent
lines--to supplement the mind of man. For as Bergson says, "it is to the
very inwardness of Life that Intuition leads us."
And Intuition is the woman-mode of Mind.
* * * * *
The women intellectuals who have done great work have been women who
inherited talents so far above the average, as spontaneously to have
reached high mental levels, without need to have sacrificed those
womanly traits which gave the noblest values to such work.
The woman of average brain, however, attains the intellectual standards
of the man of average brain only at cost of her health, of her emotions,
or of her morale.
V
Herbert Spencer said profoundly, "_Mind is as deep as the viscera_."
Indicating it as being vital and intrinsic, at one with the occulted
sources of Life.
Mind is of an order of mentality wholly different from that of
Intelligence or Intellect. Mind is of the nature of Emotion. It is
personal, is sympathy, is divination. It is the cerebration of the Soul.
The Soul, or essential Individuality, must abide amid infinitely
delicate and delicately infinite brain-cells attuned to those spiritual
vibrations whereof Mind is the reflex. And if Mind is Emotion, the Woman
brain-half, which is the department of human emotion, must be the
mainspring of the human mind.
Great intellect, pure and simple, may exist in man or woman without or
with only a fractional leaven of Mind. This is seen in the abstractions
of scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, astronomers,
financiers, and others. Such brains are special organs of a high order
of Intellection, clear, calculating and precise of observation and
reflection; rational, deductive; admirable in their unswerving
rectitude, pitiless in their impregnable emotionlessness; rejecting all
but incontestable evidences, scrupulously aggregating and faithfully
interpreting their dry bones of numbers and data and vestiges--skeletons
of Life long since extinct, or scaffoldings of Life that lives and moves
and laughs and weeps, and bears no more semblance to their bloodless
tabulations of its modes and processes than warm, creative Mother-Earth
resembles the geological strata they describe in her; or than a
beautiful flower-garden blooms in botanical treatises; or than living
men and women are pourtrayed in text-books of Anatomy and Physiology.
Many men of Science--and all the great ones--have been men of Mind as
well as of Intellect. But the intellectual processes of Abstract Science
are no more operations of Mind than the paths by which we climb to
sun-illumined peaks are the Light upon those peaks. Mind is Spiritual
Illumination--a glimmering of The Infinite, reflected in the highest and
most subtle order of the brain-cells. Rays from it are deflected toward
the concrete, to function as Intellection. But these rays enter the
brain at a different angle from that of Mind-rays.
Like woman its medium, Mind is inspirational, wayward and elusive. It
comes we know not whence. It goes we know not whither. Receptive,
intuitive, creative, colourful, it may be unwitting of Astronomy, yet it
roams amid the stars. Ignorant of Geology, in it Immortal, the dry-bones
of The Past become immortal--arise eternally in everlasting re-creation.
Its Biology is in the lives and loves, the hopes and fears, the throes
and tears of human souls and stories. It inspires the poet, priest,
historian, romancist, artist; the seer and statesman; the philosopher
and wondering child. It exalts the humble and meek. It may be lacking in
the cleverest and most learned of men. It is found in the most ignorant
and simple women; in whom it is dumb, however, failing the intellectual
talent of expression.
VI
The Woman brain-half being medium, in its higher region, of that
_Supra_-conscious emotionalism which engenders Mind, and in its lower
region, of that _Sub_conscious emotionalism which engenders vital
impulse in the body, woman's range of mentality is wider than is that
of man; extending both higher and lower in its opposite reaches.
But because her Intelligent Consciousness is not inherent in her own
brain-half, but is supplied by her borrowed masculine brain-half, her
intelligence is more superficial, is weaker and less deep and strong of
grip than is his. And when the gap between her upper and her lower
registers is not duly bridged and stabilised by an efficient
middle-register of male-intelligence, she tends toward two extremes of
mentality, both of which are emotional. Thus she lives on the plane of
her highest emotional impulses. Or she lives on the plane of her senses.
Some women act and re-act perpetually between these two extremes.
In her highest _Supra_-reaches, she is athrill with Supra-faculties. In
her lowest _Sub_-register, she is instinct and palpitant with the
colour, the magnetic vibrations and the blind forces of Matter, which
her vital processes are evolving into Life.
Extremes which are shown, at the one end, in the reasonless animal
emotionalism of hysteria, with its abandon of control, its
inco-ordinated muscular movements, its senseless weepings, cries and
laughter; at the other end, in catalepsy, in which she exists detached
from earth and its material needs and consciousness, subsisting, it may
be for weeks together, without food or drink, withdrawn into the Inner,
and potential, zones of Life and Mind. So that, no longer subject to
limitations of Matter, she perceives without aid of the senses,
apprehends without aid of intelligence, discerns without help of the
eyes, hears without instrumentality of ears. And Time and Space no
longer circumscribing her essential faculties, she visions happenings at
the Antipodes, overhears whispers across a Continent, recalls The Past,
foretells The Future.
It is because of the potence of the Subconscious medium in her,
instinct with the magnetic forces of Evolving Matter, that, in her
intelligence, she shows as more materialistic than man is, although
warmer and more quickened in her feelings.
Living personalities and issues mean to her more than intellectual
abstractions do. She is more materialistic because she cares more for
the things that matter! The puddings which in her children's young
bodies will be transmuted into living flesh and function, are to her of
more significance than the Isosceles Triangle is.
(All that is true of the Woman brain-half must be true of the Woman
brain-half in man. In him, however, his own hemisphere dominates the
bent and faculty of its female counterpart.)
It is in the emotional impressionability of the Subconsciousness that
habit, good and bad, is formed. Hence woman's native susceptibility to
her environment--a susceptibility which renders indispensable due
protection of her mind and nature during years when habits of thought
and of conduct are shaping in her. Normal man, whose emotionalism is
(like woman's intelligence) a borrowed faculty, differs essentially from
her in this. His intelligence is inherent and more stably rooted. He is
far less mimetic, far less a creature of circumstance. His firmer will
and stronger intellect enable him to rise superior to environmental
conditions, to shake himself free alike of habit and of circumstance;
his pioneering spirit disposing him to new departures.
VII
Dual Personality, Catalepsy, Epilepsy, Shock, Insanity, Chorea are
explicable as effects of abnormal dissociations or inherent discrepant
relations between the two brain-hemispheres, which represent,
respectively, Conscious (or objective) Intelligence, and
Subconsciousness (which is subjective).
Such discrepancy occasioning confusion between the two planes of
mentality, perception becomes so blurred that, as in insanity,
_subjective_ impressions are perceived as _objective fact_. And some
idea or spectre of his own mind becoming thus objective, and being seen
out of all perspective with the facts and conditions of everyday life,
the patient may be so haunted and dominated thereby that not only his
mentality, but his actions too may take distorted shape.
While the Conscious Brain-half is a lens that focuses the Concrete, the
_Sub_conscious Brain-half is a highly-sensitised mirror (or retina) that
reflects and retains, in terms of potential Memory, all impressions and
experiences. It becomes charged thus with a medley of strange and
incongruous imprints, which, so long as the lens keeps these submerged
and subconscious--because unfocused on the plane of consciousness--do
not obtrude upon mentality. Flaws or failures in the lens of reason
allowing certain imprints to emerge, these become fixed ideas and
obsessions.
It is by way of the Subconsciousness, that the hypnotist impresses
"suggestion."
Clairvoyants and other "mediums" employ crystal-gazing and other devices
in order to fatigue, and thus to paralyse or inhibit the visual function
on the outer plane of Sight. By such means, the Subconscious visual
faculty comes into operation, and sets them _en rapport_ with their
client's subconscious mentality. This becoming _objective_ to them,
those endowed with the gift of "Second-Sight" (a faculty not to be
denied) are able to visualise in it misty impressions of the subjects'
character, thoughts and circumstances. Those rare clairvoyants who are
able to establish rapport with their client's Supra-consciousness may
catch glimmerings of future events, even. Because Supra-conscious Mind,
being Supra-Natural, is not bounded by the limitations of The Natural,
in respect of Time and Space. In it, that which Was still Is, and that
which Is-to-be already Has Been.
"Spiritists" who see or hear phenomena they attribute to "spirits" are
(when such are genuine) for the most part visualising or overhearing
phenomena of their own (or of some other's) Subconsciousness, which,
owing to errors of refraction in the lens of Consciousness, have become
_objective_ to them.
It may well be by way of magnetic vibrations communicated to Ether by
the _Supra_ or the _Sub_consciousness, that apparitions and telepathic
impressions are transmitted from the brain of one person to that of
another. So too, apparitions seen of persons lately dead, and so-called
spiritist "communications" with these, may be (when genuine) phenomena
of such etheric vibrations communicated to the Supra or the
Subconsciousness of a living person, and apprehended by him in the
objective forms of "ghosts" or "voices."
Kindred vital and powerful electric vibrations emanating, at the moment
of death, from the Subconsciousness of victims murdered, may so charge
the etheric element of houses and localities as to be communicable, for
long periods afterwards, to the Subconscious mentality of "sensitives,"
which serves thus as "wireless receiver." Such sensitives derive the
impression that the scene of the tragedy is haunted by the actual
"spirit" of the murdered.
It is as incredible, of course, that an immortal soul should be chained
to the scene of the violent death of a mortal body as it is incredible
that a "spirit" should be at the call of a "medium," who--perhaps, for a
fee--should be able, at will, to summon it back to the plane of concrete
conditions, in order that it might talk (for the most part) irrelevant
nonsense.
On the other hand it is to be believed that, for a brief period after
death, a spiritual entity may remain sufficiently in touch with the
material plane as to be able, by way of those Etheric undulations
continuous through all the planes of Being, to manifest its existence to
one in close sympathy with it.
VIII
In an article by me, "_Is Man an Electrical Organism?_" which appeared
in _The Nineteenth Century_, July, 1914, I showed--on the evidence of
careful and delicate experiments by an electrical expert--that the two
sides of the body (and presumably of the brain) are of different
electrical potential. The active, right side is _positively_
electrified, while the passive, left side is _negatively_ electrified.
Mental Telepathy and Telæsthesia prove, surely, that brain and
nerve-currents are electrical--one brain-hemisphere operating as
transmitter, the other as receiver. Since Nature employs _one_ Law only
to suspend the mighty solar systems of the Universe and to bring an
apple to the ground, is it credible that she should employ _two_ laws
for "Wireless" and for Human telegraphy, respectively?
The Hibernation both of animal and vegetative organisms shows two poles
of vital function; Life and Consciousness passing into the Recessive, or
potential, mode during such winter-sleep. Plants sleep by night.
Is Sleep a recession merely from the state of Consciousness to the
potential states of Sub- and Supra-consciousness? And do these two
states alternate normally in the opposite halves of the brain,
concurrently with the alternation of Day and Night? Night-blindness
suggests such an alternation in the dual factors of Vision--which
comprises the intrinsic _faculty_ of Vision and the concrete _function_
of visualising the external. Every concrete function normally wanes with
the waning of Day.
Hence increasing drowsiness, passing into Sleep.
Morning and evening mentality differ greatly. Intellect, reason and
physical activity are paramount during the day. Emotion and imagination
intensify with the approach of night.
Is this an alternation in function of the Male and Female
brain-hemispheres, coincident with the alternation of the dual
luminaries of our earth--the positive, unchanging Dominant Sun; the
changeful Moon, with her Recessive phases and her mystical influences
upon Life and Mind? The ante-natal life of the embryo is set in terms of
lunar months. The word "lunatic" expresses the effects of lunar phases
on persons of unstable mentality.
Whence do we derive our daily influx of Life? Though we have sunk to
rest with dissolution in our bones, we awake re-charged with powers of
living--a phenomenon for which Science has no explanation.
Life does not originate in vital processes; vital processes originate in
Life. Do we, in sleep, when processes have exhausted our daily influx of
Life-power, recruit this again from a psychical source? Are living
processes the wick of a lamp which is filled with the Spirit of Life at
each recurring dawn, spent by the day's endeavour, and re-filled again
with the following dawn?
Failure of sleep kills more swiftly than starvation. And
drug-insensibility will not preserve life unless natural sleep
supervene.
If nervous energy is a complex form of electrical energy, then the brain
in which this is stored is an electrical dynamo. Is this dynamo
re-charged during sleep from some Occult Power-station?
Since, in every equation of Science, an unknown factor reveals itself,
why not candidly confess this to be a Spiritual factor?
Spirit is no more a hypothetical medium than Ether is. And Science has
been forced to assume the existence of Ether, as a basis for its
calculations. Ether and Spirit are conceivably the same medium
manifesting on different planes--the one of Physics, the other of Mind.
IX
According to Professor Clarapède:
"The intellect appears only as a makeshift, an instrument which
betrays that the organism is not adapted to its environment, a mode
of expression which reveals a state of impotence."
A saying which supports three clauses of my hypothesis: First, that the
brain, with its tributary spinal-nervous system, is an instrument of
Consciousness wholly differentiated from, and supplementary to the
organism of Life. Secondly, that it is an instrument designed for the
adaptation of the organism to environment (the rôle I have assigned,
throughout, to the male). Thirdly, that the organism of Life is not
itself adapted to its environment, and that, accordingly, Adaptation to
Environment cannot be regarded as the impulse of Evolutionary
development, since the living organism has so far failed to adapt itself
to environment that it requires a highly specialised instrument to serve
as medium between itself and its surroundings.
That Intellect--being an instrument by way of which Life is adapted to
environment, as also, on the other hand, by way of which environment is
adapted to Life--is a makeshift that "reveals a state of impotence" is
not to be admitted, however, in view of the fact that it is an
instrument which preserves Life from developing along the lines of its
environment; an adaptation which would necessarily involve lapse from
typal ideals.
Intelligence taught man, in place of so adapting to environment as to
have developed the fist of a gorilla (which at a blow can crack a human
skull), to arm himself with a club. And by thus adapting environment to
his evolutionary requirements, he conserved his resources and applied
them to development along higher lines. Such impotence as may be, arises
out of the undevelopment of a rudimentary organism. Of an organism in
course of development, however. In the meanwhile, both man and woman are
provided, in their hybrid constitution, with the "makeshift" of an
instrument of opposite sex, which supplies both with the powers neither
has yet developed in himself or herself; but without which neither is
able to exist or to function.
Hybrid Humanity is still amphibious; a creature living between two
planes, the Without and the Within, the Material and the Spiritual. And
like all amphibious creatures, the human species is, in a measure,
clumsy and imperfect. Because while fitted still with organs and
faculties that have adapted to a lower plane, it possesses likewise
organs and faculties that are adapting to a higher. Its powers thus
handicapped by requiring to engender the vital potential and the
developmental power to equip it with two orders of implement, neither
order has attained perfection of construction or of function. And both
ministering to the requirements of the other, necessarily hamper the
operations and mask the characteristics of the other.
The two sexes are making all the while for higher development, each
along routes of its contrary trend. Man develops human faculty in the
direction of the Outer and material plane of Being. Woman develops it in
the direction of the Inner and psychical plane.
Man transmits to woman a brain-hemisphere and powers ever further
increased and intensified in their relation to the concrete. Woman
transmits to man a brain-hemisphere ever further indrawn and illumined
in respect of the emotional and intrinsic. Woman's brain-hemisphere,
adapting to its concrete fellow, becomes increasingly empowered to
manifest, upon the outer plane, its own essential Woman-traits in Life
and Consciousness. Man's brain-hemisphere, adapting to its diviner
fellow, becomes increasingly illumined and inspired thereby to leaven
and exalt its concrete outlook and activities.
Man's brain, by way of its responsive adaptation to the brain of woman
interior to it in the zone of Mind, becomes thus ever more
sympathetically intelligent, or intuitive, in respect of human life and
conditions, of Science and the Arts; while losing nothing of its
Dominance and concrete power, but interpreting its operations in terms
of a profounder and a nobler Chivalry. Woman's brain becomes ever more
intelligently sympathetic and practically helpful; losing nothing of its
Recessiveness, or emotional impulse, but, on the contrary, intensifying
all its Woman-attributes by extending the range and the operations of
these in terms of a profounder and a nobler Altruism.
* * * * *
Because of their hybrid constitution, there is necessarily a borderland,
alike of faculty and function, wherein the organisation and the
characteristics of the sexes merge and approximate one another's trend
and traits. This borderland represents, however, the crudest and least
differentiated department of the personal and mental powers of both. It
is a zone of Neuterdom, and marks a grade of rudimentary organisation in
which the Sex-characteristics have not yet sufficiently diverged in
development, as clearly and finely to differentiate themselves as traits
of pure and unalloyed type.
The cruder the species or the evolutionary stage of species, the less
Sex is specialised in it.
CHAPTER V
MALE AND FEMALE SEX-INSTINCTS AND MORALE DIAMETRICALLY DIFFERENT
"_In conjunction with any other beings but men, women would have
been angels; but with men they are just women, which when all is
said and done, is much the same thing._"--De Livry.
I
Among many other misconceptions with regard to Sex-characteristics, is
the modern teaching that the sex-instinct is identical in men and women.
Ignoring the truth that a higher moral code is the mark of psychical
superiority, and moreover that the exaction of it from women, under
social penalty, has done more than any other thing to purify and to
exalt the woman-character, impassioned fallacy now sees this higher
standard demanded of the sex as a stigma of inferiority, and as an
injustice. Accordingly it preaches equal liberty in this as in other
respects. The trend toward equalisation is unfortunately (but
inevitably) in the direction of lowering the woman-code rather than of
raising man's.
No falser or more disastrous doctrine could be promulgated. As in all
its other attributes and functions, so in this, the woman-nature differs
wholly from that of the male. The primal male sex-instinct was one of
tyranny and subjugation. There was no element of affection in it, and
its bent was toward promiscuity. In the primal female, the instinct as
an initiative impulse was non-existent. The surrender was to fear, and
to habit engendered by fear. Fondness for her mate came to woman by way
of her love for his child, a source essentially monogamous in trend.
Physical passion in woman is derived from the Male-traits in her. It is,
accordingly, a borrowed, not an inherent instinct. And in all natural
women, passion is secondary to love; love belonging to her own intrinsic
nature. Because of its heritage, there is, in a true woman's love,
always a maternal altruistic element: unselfish, ministering, devoted.
Love has come to be intensified in her by fire of passion and by force
of personal attraction. It is no longer a mere meek surrender, with fear
for spur and maternity for solace. In proportion as she is of high
organisation, it has become a complex of mind and emotion and sense;
intense and vital. But always, in proportion as she is womanly, her own
way of loving--the way of devotion and tenderness--is ascendant over
passion.
In man, howsoever it be leavened by the higher love, passion dominates.
When in woman passion dominates love, she is loving with the Male-traits
in her--not as woman. And in the measure wherein she falls short of the
womanly monogamous ideal, she is less woman than she is male.
Mr. Justice Hannen, for long President of the Divorce Court--and a
subtle expert in women--observed that it was not the passionate,
warm-eyed women who figured most before him, but, in far greater number,
the cold-blooded, greedy and emotionless. Because for one woman who
succumbs to love or passion, twenty transgress from motives of vanity or
gain; or from mere frivolous craving for excitement.
It is the sexless women who are most immoral, for the same reason that
some dyspeptics are always hungry. Persons of healthy digestion eat, and
are satisfied. The healthfully-sexed love, and are content. The
emotionless woman is for ever seeking in novelty, emotions she lacks the
emotion to feel. Such women exploit passion for vanity, for
distraction, or for the primal male-instinct of subjugation. Their
desire for a lover is less a sentiment than it is of the nature of that
craving for drink, or for drugs, or for dress, which many of this order
also indulge. All are megalomanias--natural instincts distorted to vices
by warp of abnormal self-centredness.
With its foundations laid in instinct, its organic emotionalism, its
streak of mental irresponsibility, and its hunger for approbation, the
Woman-nature, when lacking in the higher Woman-traits of affection and
selflessness, or when these are not duly absorbed in the natural
interests and functions of the sex, may degenerate to a very ugly thing.
Some of our latter-day "smart" young married women, childless or with
one or two children consigned to hirelings, their passions excited by
marriage and not duly assuaged by maternity, their impulses unchastened
and their powers unexpended in affection and care for the family, seek
outlet and distraction in promiscuous philanderings, in intrigue or in
vice.
Human faculty and impulse diverted from their normal channels readily
find crooked and dangerous courses.
In the fourth year of War, the Prussian Protestant State-Church declared
that "immorality among German women has attained such a degree that the
very foundations of Society are threatened." This and kindred
developments in other War-ridden countries are not due to women having
changed their natures, but are the outcome of conditions so altered as
to have released them from the wholesome disciplinary exercise of their
accustomed duties, relaxing thus the salutary curbs of habit and
convention. Child of Nature that she is, woman is a born rebel; for ever
in revolt against the law and order and restraints which man has imposed
as indispensable to Progress. Whereas men abhor, women exult in crises
and upheavals. Because these serve for outlet to their restive
emotionalism and supply scope for exotic sensation, while at the same
time giving them temporary mastery over the male--who is always at a
disadvantage in exhibitions of feeling.
And this temperamental erraticism is valuably disciplined by the
masculine bent for rule and method, and normally finds admirable
safety-valves in wifely, housewifely, and motherly functions.
II
To advocate a moral standard higher for women than for men is regarded
now as reactionary and regressive.
Nevertheless, it is certain that beyond all the other virtues, personal
purity is essentially the highest, and is racially the most valuable of
all the Woman-qualities. Lapses in the other sex are in no way
comparable, as regards moral, biological, or sociological significance,
with kindred lapses in woman. Because of her native non-conformability,
once she has deviated from the monogamous code, she is dangerously
likely never after to conform to it. (It is a truism that _The woman who
has one, has many lovers_.) Her non-conformity requires, accordingly, to
be protected by a social ordinance more rigid than is that of man. Man
being less complex of psychology, moreover, that which in him is merely
biological is vice in woman. The fact alone that the male is able to
employ the sex-function as a weapon of brutality (as in violation)
proves him totally dissimilar to woman in this relation.
Man disperses; Woman absorbs. And the consistency of Nature is such that
these two diametrically-opposite biological modes in reproduction are
reflected on the planes of mind and impulse. The diametrical difference
of the modes disposes outright of the Feminist demand for identical
moral codes for the sexes; the sex-functions of the two being so
intrinsically contrary in method and inherence, with correspondingly
signal differences in moral impulse and significance.
Biologically, the masculine function concludes with its fulfilment.
Whereas the feminine function _begins_ mainly therewith, and continues
thence onward to operate in an ever-deepening, broadening, and
intensifying tide of issues; biological and psychological. And so potent
and subtle is Nature's consistency with regard to this primary and vital
function of woman in Life, that whether or not biological issue results,
psychological issues do inevitably. Woman's mode and mood of
_receptiveness_ in this mysterious union so operate that, in her
surrender, she admits to the inmost sanctuary of her being an alien
presence--which remains with her till death. Fade as it may from her
consciousness, it remains, nevertheless, impressed for ever after on the
vibrant records of her sensitive Subconsciousness, as vitally as in the
hour of her surrender. And underlying mind and character and conduct
ever after, it for ever after contributes its quota to these.
Because of the vivifying potence of her creative womanhood--the function
whereof is to engender Life--the stranger admitted to her citadel
becomes endued with Life, and takes up his abode with her to the end of
her natural term. For this reason, the adulterous woman is adulterous in
a sense impossible to man--adulterous in both a vital and an intrinsic
psychical sense that is revolting.
With the increasing intensification in the male, with advancing
evolution, of his inherited Woman-traits, he has become ever further
endowed with Woman's Sub- and Supra-conscious faculties. So that the
function which was, in its primal moral, but brief and cursory, ending
summarily with its biological fulfilment, has become increasingly endued
in him with the vital emotionalism, and accordingly with the moral
significance inherent to the Woman-nature. If his experiences fade more
quickly from his consciousness than hers do, they remain nevertheless
(in the degree of his psychical development) potent still in his
Subconsciousness--as possibly adulterating and debasing factors. But
since his Subconscious emotionalism is an acquired and not an inherent
part of his male mentality, it is a medium vastly less sensitised and
operative in him than it is in her; of whom it is the very basis of her
being.
This is no apology, of course, for masculine aberration, but a counsel
of feminine virtue--a counsel making indirectly, therefore, but none the
less surely for masculine virtue also. The reasons for chastity in the
one sex differ diametrically from those which should be the motive
thereof in the other, however.
Chivalry and Prostitution are incompatible.
It must be confessed, however, that deterioration of the
woman-organisation and temperament conduces greatly to masculine
promiscuity. Not only because this entails loss of power to charm and
bind the mate, but because with the sex-immaturity, on the one hand of
the over-Feminised type, on the other, of the Mannish woman, women lose,
in greater or less degree, the natural power of one sex to assuage
passion in the other.
Man is deteriorated, moreover, by moral and psychical deterioration in
that sex whence moral impulse springs, because, in such case, the appeal
of woman ceases to be, as is normal, to the emotional and chivalrous in
him, but evokes, on the contrary, biological instinct mainly, or merely.
It is well-established truth that her first lover (or her husband,
supposing she had loved him) retains a unique hold upon a woman's mind
throughout her after-life--his personality or memory dominating her
imagination as no later-comer is able to do. This is because that first
enters into possession of both Consciousness and Subconsciousness while
the tablets of these are still virgin and unblotted. This first
impresses himself, therefore, clearly and strongly defined upon her
exquisitely-sensitised tablets of remembrance.
Latter-day young girls, permitted the injurious licence of free and
unchaperoned association with the other sex, even when they come to
marriage, inviolate, have, many of them, passed through experiences
which so have blurred and sullied their young highly-impressionable
temperament and senses as to have despoiled these of that fair purity
and freshness indispensable alike to potent impressions and to deep
attachments. In natural woman who has arrived at womanhood without
premature arousing of the senses, soul and sense are at fine poise, and
respond in vital unison to love. In girls whose innocence and conduct
have not been duly safeguarded, the prematurely-excited senses have
become detached from the soul--from the higher emotions, that is. With
the result that this fine poise of mind and body, which is the Hall-mark
of Woman-development, and whence romantic passion issues, has been
irretrievably lost.
The same is true, in degree, of young men. They too deteriorate when
biological instinct is dissociated in them from the higher impulses of
passion. But in men, the poise, being less delicate, is not only less
readily lost, but it is more readily recovered. In this, as in other
things, the normal male makes for means; while woman's bent is toward
extremes. Further, physical passion being normally far stronger in him,
and _initiative_ in impulse--whereas in her it is mainly
_responsive_--the senses assert sway over him spontaneously. While in
natural girls these lie more or less dormant, unless artificially
roused, or until aroused in natural response to love.
Early philanderings (more serious than boy-and-girl comradeship and
innocent flirtation) prevent women not only from ever attaining their
highest levels of organisation and temperament, but they destroy
effectually their power to love profoundly and whole-heartedly. They rob
them, accordingly, of the greatest transfiguring potence and happiness
of life.
III
Odious and startling evidence that because of woman's vital emotionalism
and sensitive psychology, her nature retains ineffaceable vestiges of
all that has happened to her, is the fact that a woman's children by a
second husband may resemble her first husband far more than they
resemble their father. A significant and repulsive adulteration of type,
and one so intrinsic that a woman who had been previously wife to a
negro or a Chinaman will present her second husband, typically European,
with offspring of negroid or of Mongolian type. That husbands and wives
come to resemble one another in physiognomy and characteristics, is
further indication of the subtle and potent temperamental fusion and
implications of the mysterious sex-union.
The adulteration of type which may thus repulsively mar the offspring of
women twice-mated is seen, at first hand, in that adulteration of
personality which results from sex-promiscuity. Not only is the
individuality both of mind and character obliterated, but the
individuality both of form and feature is obliterated too. The features
of persons of irregular life become blurred and more or less mongrel;
character and expression so degenerating as to produce eventually that
which has been styled a "composite face"--the face resulting when a
number of portraits of different persons are printed one over another on
the same photographic plate.
The degree to which in the sex-union--howsoever lightly entered
on--they twain become intrinsically and remain irrevocably one, in the
vital records of individualism and character, is wholly unsuspected. But
in this--which is a complex phenomenon of Hypnosis--indelible undying
images, such as are impressed upon the Subconscious mind in every other
form of Hypnosis, remain impressed thereon; to inspire and fructify, or
to weaken and vitiate nature and faculty.
That vigilant supervision of her young daughters for which the early
Victorian mother is now decried, secured a purity of racial type, in
fine physique and constitution, in notable talent and enterprise, in
rare womanly beauty and virile handsomeness, which proves the unique
potentialities inherent in our Anglo-Saxon stock. No merely material
service a woman can render to the State approaches in value the
all-potent one of safeguarding the virtue of its young daughters.
Each sex has its own morale to sustain. And personal virtue is woman's.
The desire for equal liberty in this respect is added proof of the
ascendancy, in modern women, of Male over their own natural
Woman-traits. It springs not from an intensification of passion, but, on
the contrary, from a waning of that power to love which holds a woman
true to one mate.
Last and most cogent of reasons: In view of those long centuries of
suffering and aspiration, by way of which the evolution of the
Woman-traits of love and purity has been achieved in blood and
tears--albeit the monogamous ideal is far yet from attainment--beyond
all else, the sex should strive toward this, both personally and
socially.
It is the soul of Love and Life, the impulse of Human advance. With
decline of this ideal, the emotions cease to centre in the Home and
Family, and civilisation relapses to barbarism.
IV
Ellen Key, in _Love and Marriage_, observes: "Few propositions are so
lacking in proof as that monogamy is the form of sexual life which is
indispensable to the vitality and culture of nations." And further: "all
the progress that is ascribed to Christian civilisation has taken place
while monogamy was indeed the law, but polygamy the custom."
She overlooks the portentous truth that a law is the expression of a
general aspiration toward an ideal for which a people is striving. That
a law is broken proves that the higher in man moves him to set a
standard beyond his power--or beside his inclination--to sustain
undeviatingly. Yet although he may not act up to it undeviatingly, it
stands, nevertheless, for the ideal he realises that he should reach.
Abolition of a good and elevating law proves, therefore, not only the
serious lapse of a community from an established standard of conduct,
but it inevitably lowers the level of conduct by removing
barriers--self-respect and self-restraint, public opinion and so
forth--standing in the way of laxity. Despite the death-penalty, murders
are committed. But were the death-penalty to be abolished, murder would
increase by leaps and bounds. The human mind is strangely susceptible.
And the power of habits acquired under fear of penalties is an
invaluable force for good. The higher minds of a community evolve and
establish codes for lesser minds to shape by. And undoubtedly the
subconscious as well as the conscious shaping toward such standards
furthers development in the directions thereof. To make honesty a matter
of personal choice, with no penalties attaching to theft, would be in
itself an incentive to theft.
Comparison with polygamous countries, of countries in which monogamy is
the law, refutes straightway Miss Key's discredit of monogamy; showing
the polygamous uncivilised, unenlightened, unprogressive, subject to
monogamous races, and in every sense, both materially and morally
decadent. And if, with a notion of establishing equality in all things
between the sexes by emancipating woman from the higher moral code,
leasehold marriage or other forms of wedded laxity should be
substituted--not only would national purity, but personal character and
happiness too would suffer grievously.
If men have not kept the monogamous law, the instinct of jealousy,
reinforced by repugnance to supporting alien offspring, has seen to it
that wives should trespass as seldom, at all events, as was possible to
be guarded against. Custom and public opinion, furthered by personal
fear and fear of divorce, have all contributed toward advancing ideals
of womanly honour and conduct. And from monogamous mothers--whether
voluntarily or involuntarily so--progress has derived immense impulse.
Apart from biological considerations, the benefit to the family of the
mother's influence centred in her home and kept from straying thence,
either by her own aspirations, by public opinion, or by fear of the
husband, has been incalculable.
During and since the War, crime among children has increased by 50 per
cent., largely owing to absence of mothers from their homes, working or
drinking, or otherwise dissipating, while their children have been left
to run wild in the streets.
Our reformatories are full to overflowing with these neglected
unfortunates; deprived thus of the haven of homes and maternal control.
As a man is responsible to the State for the support of his family, so a
woman should be held responsible to the State for the proper care and
supervision of its future citizens, who, without due care and
disciplinary influence, become a burden and scourge to the community.
In all these vitally-momentous issues, let us free our minds alike of
sex-bias and false sentiment, in order that we may see clearly, and may
act honestly and wisely in the interests not only of women themselves,
but in those of the Race.
V
The sex-instinct in woman having had its origin in surrender, retains
much still of this primal element. And both middle-class men of lower
evolutionary grade, and men of the working classes, exercise still, to
considerable degree, the brute-trait of terrorism over women--moral
rather than physical terrorism.
In rescuing young girls from molestation in the streets, one may see in
them the panic of such intimidation. They are pale and trembling, with
pupils widely dilated. In full daylight, it may be in a crowded
thoroughfare, with police at hand, primal instinctive emotionalism
paralyses reason, resource and will-power. Weak-minded women, who lack
their due share of masculine combativeness to stiffen resistance in
them, frequently marry, or otherwise yield to such men, far more because
they are afraid than because they are fond of them. And the terrorism
husbands have exercised over wives has nerved wives against the
terrorism exercised over them by other men; and has thus served to
protect them from their own weaknesses.
The Woman-traits, always at a disadvantage in concrete affairs against
superior strength, have been buttressed thus and coerced--often cruelly
and tyrannously, 'tis true. But they have nevertheless been greatly
furthered in development by a mate who, if he did not recognise the
higher calibre of woman's nature, nor himself aspired to the code he
exacted from her, recognised, at all events, that this higher code he
exacted of her was that best adapted to progress. Thus has poor
mortality been beaten and shapen on the anvils of compulsion and
exigency. And always the woman has most suffered--to be beautiful of
nature.
Were it not that an advance-guard of higher and chivalrous men stand, by
force of the laws they have made, between women and the lower and
coarser masculine orders, no woman's life would be worth the living
because of perpetual affront. With existing laws, indeed, which protect
even the most degraded of the sex, the women of the poorer classes are
everywhere subject to insult and unseemly jest, open or covert. Because
to many men of crude order, the eternal mystery of Sex shows mainly as
subject for levity. The crass and unimaginative frequently deride thus
things too high for their dense understanding.
Women have come to take their chivalrous protection by law as mere
matter-of-course, precisely as they take it as matter-of-course that men
should labour, and should endow them with the benefits of their
industry. These things are by no means matter-of-course, however, but
are matter of chivalry--chivalry so innate as to have become convention.
It would be occasion for laughter, were it not cause for profoundest
regret, that the hypertrophy of male-traits in woman has engendered
to-day a sex-antagonism which has set her in open revolt against man,
from whom, if she has suffered and suffers, and will continue to suffer
at the hands of his defects, she nevertheless derives, and has always
derived from his chivalries her most gracious human privileges.
That the obligations and the recompenses of the sexes are reciprocal,
is true. It is equally true, however, that the choice has lain
with men to have ignored the nobler issues of the compact. As the
seraglio-imprisoned women of the less manly and progressive peoples
prove.
All our civilisation, with its complex sociological, intellectual, and
moral developments, rests on a basis of Force. Men must still prove
their right to each and all of their laboriously-won achievements by
arms and the valours of war. In peace, the laws--which alone make life
tolerable--rest equally upon the powers of masculine will and strength
to inflict due punishment for violation thereof.
And laws having been made by men, it was clearly optional with them to
have left women unprotected, or far less protected than the other sex;
in place of having extended special protection to their more delicate
attributes.
In safeguarding women in general, men safeguard their own individual
women, of course. Human motive is involved; is the product of a number
of factors. That this is so is reason for eliminating no single one of
these factors, lest the resultant undergo a wholly unexpected and
disastrous transformation.
The Plan sets most women at the mercy of most men, by reason of the
greater physical strength of males, and by temptation of their more
urgent sex-instinct. In view of her inherent disabilities, it would have
seemed, _a priori_, that no woman could in ruder days have attained to
womanhood, inviolate.
And yet that her very disabilities have served for her increasing
protection is shown by the fact of her increasing protection as, with
the evolution of her higher organisation, her disabilities have
intensified.
Civilised woman, with her more delicate organisation, is far more
defenceless than was savage woman. But in response to the claims of her
increasing defencelessness, the instinctive chivalry of the stronger
male, her natural protector, has become progressively the intelligent
and moral chivalry of higher man. No strength or capability of woman's
own to defend herself could so have served her; nor could so have served
the other sex for fine incentive.
To free woman of her highly specialised and inspiring disabilities by
substituting in her, powers, muscular and mental, that would fit her to
meet the male on equal terms, would be to frustrate the method of the
male evolutionary ascent, by eliminating the humanising and uplifting
appeal to his manhood of these her inspiring unfitnesses.
The deplorable decadence in masculine regard for and bearing toward
women, which has resulted in direct proportion as the sex has
substituted male efficiencies for womanly ineptitudes, serves for one of
many other valuable object-lessons of the War.
VI
Among other Feminist fallacies, the _demi-mondaine_ has come to be
regarded as victim merely, on the one hand, of an unjust,
man-administered economic system, on the other, of masculine
libertinism. The truth is that the vast majority of immoral women are
under no compulsion, but voluntarily adopt this mode of life either to
escape work, or because of a natural vicious proclivity. A number are
mental defectives; some actually feeble-minded, others only morally
deficient.
It must always be remembered, moreover, that, biologically speaking, the
separation of the _genus_ woman into the folds, respectively, of sheep
and goats is of signal racial and social service. That some goats are in
the sheep-fold, some lambs among the goats, is not to be denied.
Fatalities, injustices, and incongruities are inevitable to all broad
human classifications. In the main, however, the women who resist
temptation and remain virtuous are obviously better fitted to be the
wives and mothers of the Race than are they who fall.
And although this is not, of course, the calculated purpose of this
lamentable under-world, the rough division of the sex thereby into two
main classes has been of service, by supplying a sociological backwater
wherein the worst of our racial derelicts--mental and moral
defectives--are segregated; and are precluded, for the most part, from
perpetuating their mental and moral defectiveness.
Women, like men, must uphold and battle for their standards in the
teeth of circumstance. The most notable types of parasite-women,
selfish, slothful, worthless, venal, vicious, whose standards are jewels
and clothes, their goals luxury and pleasure and the evasion of all that
is difficult and distasteful in life, are found among the aristocratic
and the plutocratic orders; safely secured against economic necessity or
lack of scope and outlet for their powers.
The Feminist fallacy that prostitution is almost entirely a product of
male economics has been strikingly refuted, too, by War-conditions,
which opened numerous well-remunerated employments for the sex. Yet,
coincident with a sad deficit of women to fill these, prostitution has
waxed rampant.
Wise and discreet were those early Victorians, with their uncompromising
ostracism of loose women. Apart altogether from such salutary expression
of their condemnation of impure living, they were vastly too clever and
far-seeing to admit persons of notoriously evil habit, peeress or
actress, to association with their clean young girls, as modern mothers
do; to meet and to mix freely with them socially or at Charity Bazaars,
on Flag-Days, and so forth. With the result that girls all the world
over have become increasingly lax and decadent in tone and manner, in
dress and morale, from confusion of their young standards by social
tolerance and recognition of such persons, as also from corruption by
demoralising contact with and observation of such.
Intolerance? Pharisaism? By no means!
The strong and straight, uncompromising moral standards of its women
serve as landmarks of, and impulse to a nation's progress. Clear and
definite lines of demarcation between good and evil, between possible
and impossible modes of conduct, point the moral of advance, and turn
the scale in the upward direction for the weak, the hesitating, and the
imitative.
Dread of consequences went far, in less sophisticated days, to
safeguard and foster womanly virtue. Modern expedients have,
unfortunately, removed all cause for fear in this relation; permitting
an impunity of action demoralising to the weak in will or principle, who
require every possible aid and check to guide them aright. In simpler
days, girls who had lapsed were steadied and strengthened in character
and self-restraint by the compulsion to support, as too by their natural
fondness for the unwanted child. Now the first step--having cost them
nothing--predisposes to further backslidings. And both character and
self-control degenerate increasingly.
VII
To weaken the marriage-bond by setting it for a term of years only, or
by making it terminable by consent, would virtually destroy marriage and
family-life. The fact that the bond would not be binding would make
persons more careless even than they are at present in selection of the
mate, and would thus multiply the number of mis-matings. Which would be
still further to deteriorate species, since the finer types of children
are born only of well-mated parents.
The finality of the bond, if it does not always prevent one or both from
meeting some other they prefer, prevents the scrupulous, at all events,
from seeking such. Or having found, it keeps many from fostering and
from yielding to temptation. Were marriage terminable, or, as is
sometimes proposed, were it abolished wholly, and love the only bond
between the sexes, there would be no confidence, no sense of security
between the partners, no stability of family life; no centring of
interests in this, and but small endeavour to retain affections which
for the many could be easily replaced--and replaced, moreover, with the
zest of novelty. On the contrary, a curse of unrest would afflict the
vast majority of married folk with the unsettling--mayhap with the
alluring--prospect of meeting their further "Fate"; perhaps their
second, possibly their third, it might be, their seventh "Fate."
Only the few are strong enough of heart or stable enough of character to
remain steadfast for a lifetime in any undertaking, unless bound
stringently thereto by authorised obligations, incentives, and
penalties. Only the few are deep enough of nature to love for a
lifetime; or are deep enough of nature to love so intensely as to
justify altering the marriage-code in order to spare these few
suffering. The wane of nine out of ten honeymoons impresses the value of
an inflexible decree that declines to reckon with disillusion, but
sternly bids the disillusioned take up their burden and make the best of
it. And having no choice, many do this and make a success of it--on new,
and, it may be, on far higher lines than those they had set out upon.
That but few love so deeply as to love for life by no means implies that
marriage for less than a lifetime should be substituted. It shows, on
the contrary, that the majority of persons would prove as incapable of
loving No. Two for long as they had been incapable of loving No. One; or
as they would be incapable of loving No. Three, or No. Ten. A bond that
rivets them for life to No. One therefore, and entails loss or suffering
when they fail to abide by it, is safeguard for them against such a
succession of loves as would be as demoralising to the individual as it
must be destructive of society.
Examples of this tendency to amorous licence have been furnished by the
complications of War-"widows," who, on report of the death of
soldier-husbands, remarried in unseemly haste--only to find the husband
return. So too, by the widespread infidelity of wives to absent
soldier-husbands. If the grave and moving circumstance of a husband
facing death or mutilation in the trenches, for his country's defence,
was not grave nor moving enough to keep his wife faithful to him, then
we should congratulate ourselves upon a marriage-law which, by exacting
penalties whereby such a wife suffers material damage, supplies the only
argument likely to stiffen the morale of so light-minded and callous a
creature.
Nothing less binding than a lifelong contract is coercive enough or is
sufficiently chastening to bridle woman's native changefulness and curb
her instinctive emotionalism. The realisation that there is no way out
of a situation is her finest incentive to nobility. She bruises her
impulses against the iron of circumstance, and the essences of her
intrinsic Woman-soul distil in patience and in sweetness. Under the
harrow of sacrifice, she feels herself martyred. And yet without the
sense of martyrdom, as may be also without the conditions thereof, no
true woman is ever wholly content that she is fulfilling her destiny.
Ellen Key writes of "_all the impurity that the sexual life shuts up
within the whited sepulchre of legal marriage_." She falls here into the
common error of assuming such evil to be restricted solely to the state
of marriage. Whereas the higher interests, the duties and affections of
the family life--purifying and inspiring influences lacking in
unsanctioned unions--make inevitably for the uplifting of the relation.
That some husbands and wives fall short of the pure intensity of passion
possible to some others between whom love is the sole bond, is true, of
course. But as are most other human developments, this is a matter of
the character of individuals rather than of the terms of the bond
uniting them. Certainly, high and tender passion is scarcely to be
expected in a union for no better reason than that this is illicit.
VIII
Were life designed for happiness and pleasure merely, the case would be
different. Were one life our sole portion, it might be different too.
Having one life only, we might be justified in claiming for it the joy
of the best love available. An unhappy or a less than happy marriage is
only one, however, of the many expedients for the evolution of faculty.
If the evolution of the individual progresses by way of countless
earth-existences strung upon a thread of spiritual continuity, one life
is but a brief and single page of everybody's great Life-serial.
That is, doubtless, why all feel their lot to be an episode
merely--unexplained, and incomplete, rather than a finished story. And
in our innumerable pages and innumerable episodes, we must resign
ourselves to sundry matrimonial vicissitudes.
Says the author of _The World-Soul_, "The more function is specialised
in either sex the less able either is to stand alone." This is argument
for further and fuller specialisation of their respective functions, in
both sexes, because so great is the happiness of fulfilling for that
other his or her great need of us, and of being blessed by that other in
our own need. But too, it raises the voluntary surrender of such
happiness for honour's sake, for holiness' sake, for God's sake, or for
children's sake, to the height of a renunciation which transfigures
human life and character, and proportionally ennobles both.
That both man and woman should be entitled to divorce for infidelity,
for incorrigible drunkenness, criminality or insanity on the part of the
mate, would be just and reasonable clauses in the marriage-code.
Because, apart from the unmerited cruelty and shame of such bondages, is
the risk of entailing degenerate offspring. Otherwise, it appears that
relaxation of the Divorce-Law would result in evils far worse than any
it would remedy. And these evils would re-act inevitably far more
cruelly--both temperamentally and materially--upon women and children
than upon men.
The conjugal and the paternal instincts being traits the sex has
acquired by long ages of developmental progress, for men to lose these
would be as easy as the loss would be degenerative to themselves and to
those others. Folly to suppose that having reached a certain stage of
human character-building, we can, with impunity, kick away the
foundations whereon our house of evolution has been raised; and on which
it must rest for all time.
The irrevocability of the marriage-contract is woman's greatest
security. Realisation of that sex-lawlessness which is an innate
Male-trait--relic of the promiscuous and cursory nature of the primal
male-instinct--should set us on guard against weakening, in the least
degree, this covenant, which is the best among those privileges whereby
man, in the teeth of his inherent instincts, has chivalrously protected
woman and the family. In the teeth of these, he has applied his natural
intelligent bent for Conformity in concrete affairs to the repression
and regulation of his impulses by the institution of Marriage. And
this--the apotheosis of masculine conformity to the exactions of
Progress--is now menaced by the native Non-conformity of woman,
exploited by Feminism.
It is notable that men are but seldom truly fond of, nor are they
faithful to the wife who works outside the home. In France, where the
clever, industrious wife of the middle and lower classes is more a
business-partner than she is a wife, conjugal fidelity is not expected.
Not only is a house without a woman in it to devote her best interests
and powers to the arts of home-making, not a home, but the bond of that
fraction of interest and affection left over to her from her work
outside it is a thing too slight to bind her husband to her. He finds no
difficulty in substituting--should he seek this--a haven with more
atmosphere of home and sentiment in it, companionship with more of
temperament in it, more resiliency and freshness, than that of the
industrious and wage-earning, but fatigued and jaded working-wife.
The children of such a union--if such there be--supply no bond either to
draw together and unite their parents. Children reared by servants,
without understanding or affection, are but seldom affectionate or
charming. Moreover, the children of hard-working mothers are but seldom
true children. They bring to the home nothing of the freshness, the
vitality or charm of natural childhood.
If father and mother possess æsthetic sensibilities, these are offended
probably by the plainness and the lack of graces in their
offspring--bye-products merely of their economic assiduities. Perhaps
the big spectacles through which the young eyes gaze forth like doleful
prisoners from behind bars, make them feel strangely uncomfortable; as
in the presence of weird and reproachful intelligences.
Neither derives interest or joy enough from the family circle to repay
them for their parental obligations and responsibilities.
IX
Love between the sexes, being a need alike of souls and biogenesis, is
regarded by some as reason enough in itself for relaxing the
Marriage-law--even for the abolition of Marriage; making affection the
sole bond between the lovers.
We cannot, logically, abolish the legal contract uniting two persons in
marriage, however, without at the same time abolishing every other form
of legal contract, and the legal liabilities thereof. Logically, we
cannot make conjugal duty and family responsibility mere matters of
personal conscience, unless we are assured that the human species has
reached such a phase of moral integrity as to need no other incentive
than its own integrity to secure fulfilment of its obligations, moral
and material. If we abolish the legal factor in marriage, to be
consistent we must abolish the legal factor in business partnerships and
in all other sociological compacts. We must make the payment of rent, of
rates and taxes, of tradesmen's bills and so forth, debts of conscience
and of honour merely; for the discharge whereof conscience and honour
must alone suffice.
It may be objected that these are purely material obligations, while the
bond between the sexes is an emotional one. And yet--Have we reached
such a stage of development that emotional considerations are more
binding on us than material ones are?
Moreover, if we are to make love the sole bond--clearly the waning of
love must release from the bondage. Further, when we sift out the purely
emotional element in the vast majority of unions, we shall find it but a
very slender factor among other more binding reciprocities. Certainly a
far more slender thread to trust to in the safeguarding of a contract
than is, for example, the factor of commercial honesty. Commercial
honesty is not, perhaps, a conspicuous virtue of the times.
Nevertheless, the sense of honesty in business is a good deal stronger
in most men than is their sense of honour with regard to love. And their
sense of honour in love has developed mainly as a direct consequence of
those legal compulsions and responsibilities of love which have been
exacted and fostered by the legality of marriage.
How many men are there, for example, who, having come to care for some
other, hold themselves bound in the least by an illicit tie; howsoever
much they may have cared at one time for the woman in the case? Lightly
come--lightly go! And if the terms, marriage and love, are by no means
necessarily synonymous, it has been, nevertheless, greatly by way of the
obstacles and compulsions and the social penalties attaching to
violation of the marriage vows that the love-passion has been purified
and uplifted out of the barbarism of mere instinct and promiscuity,
into the graces of emotion and the virtues of monogamy.
Had any man and woman, reciprocally attracted at their first meeting,
been free always to have carried this attraction straightway to its
biological conclusion, the sex-relation would be still the merely
physiological incident it was in primal forests. The circumstance that
such attraction has been debarred from ready consummation by the
obligations and the obstacles engendered by a recognised and legalised
bond between the sexes, has been debarred, moreover, in innumerable
cases, by one of the attracted couple being subject to this bond--all of
this has preserved the nascent emotion from straightway relapsing to the
basic level whence it sprang, and has fostered the evolution of love in
the higher reaches of emotion; of imagination, of controlled and
chastened passion.
It may be said that modern men and women, loving one another with the
more highly-evolved passion of our enlightened epoch, would love as
devotedly and would remain as constant in an illicit as in a legalised
union. If so, such constancy would be an echo mainly of the
long-dignified state of wedded constancy; and the greatest of all
tributes to the values of this. Nevertheless--For how long after the
clarion-note of aspiration sounded by Marriage should have ceased to
vibrate, would the echo of it last?
Should woman, in her short-sighted efforts to "emancipate" herself still
further, release herself wholly (as she now inclines to do) from the
marriage-bond, she will have thrown back in man's face the very
tenderest guerdon of his worth and of his high regard for her. And she
will have destroyed, at a blow, his most vital incentive to further
advance, her own and her children's most powerful safeguard, and the
main buttress not alone of national but, as well, of Natural human
progress.
CHAPTER VI
FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DISASTROUS TO INFANT-LIFE AND HUMAN
FACULTY
"_A hundred men may make an encampment, but it takes a woman to
make a home._"--Chinese Proverb.
I
The paths alike of progress and of happiness lie, obviously, in the ever
further dignifying and enhancement of the functions of home and of
wifehood, by way of every further interest and charm that higher, fairer
Womanhood confers.
The chief cause of latter-day conjugal unrest and disaffection is to be
found--not in the natural state of marriage, but in a decline of those
personal traits which make for happiness therein. Girls brought up as
now, without home-interests or training, but, on the contrary, with
mainly self-realising and self-absorbing aims and pursuits, are
deficient not only in domestic aptitudes but lamentably also in
emotional qualities. And the home-life without the emotions to give
values to it, is like a fine air played on the keyboard of a piano from
which have been removed the strings that transform the movements of the
fingers into melody.
So keenly self-centred the majority of women have become, so bent upon
their hobbies and careers, as to have lost nearly all of that
sympathetic adaptiveness natural to woman, which enables her to
forget--and to forget with pleasure--her own in the personality and
interests of others.
How eagerly latter-day girls seek refuge from their boredom in the
tennis-court, the Bridge-table, the dance, or in some other mode of
direct action which entails but little temperamental tax or output!
To such degree the sexes are now drilled to the same standards,
interests, and points-of-view, that neither brings to the other any new
thing, of freshness, of colour, or of inspiration. The interchange is
only too often a competitive struggle, indeed, as to which shall know
(or shall appear to know) more than the other knows (or appears to know)
of topics equally trite to both. There is little or nothing of the zest
and glamour of a delightful picnic of two; whereat each keeps producing
some new and unexpected thing to supplement the new and unexpected of
the other. Modern woman has no novelty in language even for her mate,
but deals him back his own slang--a vernacular which among women of the
working-classes not seldom takes the forms of blasphemy and obscenity,
wholly disqualifying for the rearing of children. As, indeed, do the
coarse and vulgar phrases in vogue now among the cultured of the sex. In
view of woman's native faculty of music and her subtle aptitude for
naming (as for nick-naming), one cannot doubt that she it was who
mothered Language. Yet now-a-days, adopting virile lingo, her "rotten,"
"stick-it," and the like are murdering the infant of her quondam genius.
And what genius it was, that gave birth to our surpassing mother-tongue!
In case of engagement between a young man and his bored one--whom, by
the way, although he may suspect that the relation is not all that it
might be, he never suspects of being bored--manlike, he trusts to
marriage "to put everything right." Yet although the newly-wedded more
and more relieve themselves of the strain of a honeymoon, with its
unmitigated (or inimitable) company of two, a month or six weeks of
wedlock find most young modern couples wofully at cross-purposes.
Possession has freed the man of the obligation to woo. And when the
wooing--which had engendered for the woman a flattering and intoxicating
sense of being a coveted prize--comes to a more or less abrupt ending,
she feels herself defrauded.
He too! Because while Courtship is man's affair, Marriage is woman's.
And where love is not, to recruit and quicken passion and to take the
place of novelty, the wane of honeymoons is sad indeed.
(There are faults and failings on the bridegroom's part, 'tis true. That
belongs to another story, however. Sufficient for these pages is the
unpleasing task of holding a mirror to the faults of a single sex.)
It should be remembered that men, for the most part, are not eager to
marry. Considering the nature of the bond, with its lifelong
obligations, responsibilities and sacrifices, this is little to be
wondered at. A week after marriage a wife may be crippled by an
accident, may become insane; or may otherwise be thrown, more or less a
burden, on her husband's hands. Or she may develop disagreeable and
wholly uncongenial traits. In spite of which, even though they wreck his
happiness, he will have bound himself to her--and will have bound
himself to maintain her--till death them parts.
He too, of course, may turn out wholly unsatisfactory. That belongs
likewise to the other story. But from the material standpoint, the onus
of support which falls on him, and which, in the case of an invalided or
of an obnoxious wife, may prove nothing but a carking care, makes the
liabilities unequal.
It is, doubtless, because of these his greater material obligations and
responsibilities, that passion has been planned to beset man more
urgently than woman. And had Church and State not taken advantage of his
inherent, chivalrous instinct, and so turned it to account, both for his
own moral uplifting and for the founding and maintenance of the family,
woman and society--and man, accordingly--would have remained at very low
grades of development.
II
Among other "wrongs" resented by women is that his obligation and his
economic means to support a wife have endowed the male, in the majority
of cases, with the lordly prerogative of selecting his mate. On her
side, while having much to gain materially by marriage, unless she is
unusually attractive she has but little range of choice.
And yet this masculine prerogative of selection has served as the
strongest incentive to the culture both of higher attribute and charm in
woman. Failing that economic struggle which has been man's spur to
development, this incentive has operated vastly to her benefit; inducing
her parents to educate and to enhance her gifts, and influencing her to
do the like for herself. A proportion of women have always been
self-supporting, of course. But their work has been mainly in fields of
unskilled labour, and has lacked, accordingly, the stimulus of
competition. The goal of marriage has not only supplied thus the element
of emulation, but it has turned Woman-culture in the direction of
developing personal traits and morale, rather than industrial or
professional specialisations. And this has been the right direction,
seeing that the rôle of the sex is one demanding personal qualities and
virtues rather than economic technicalities.
As regards human values, it is a higher privilege to be a charming
personality than to be a successful stockbroker. So that in this, as in
other things, woman has been privileged by her disabilities.
III
An ever-increasing number of working-class girls, on leaving school,
enter a work-shop, a factory, or an office, and spend their time and
powers in minor mechanical tasks; gumming labels on jam-pots, making
match-boxes or tags for boot-laces, addressing envelopes, and other such
employments, deadening to female intelligence, impulse and temperament.
Their minds and natures become too warped and narrowed to adapt later,
with ease and interest, to the many and varied intelligent functions of
the home. They escape thence, accordingly, after a few months or years
of marriage (supposing them to have given up their industrial tasks for
a space even), and abandoning home and children, return to the old
narrow, mechanical routine, to which alone their poor stultified brains
have been shaped. In the education of girls, the Subconscious mimetic
element in their impressionable natures should be borne in mind. It may
be turned to excellent, as to disastrous account.
M. Vologotsky, head of the Omsk Government, has called attention to a
significant phenomenon of modern Russian life--namely, that the women
take no interest in their homes. This he attributes to their low states
of culture. Could they but be persuaded to become "house-proud"--with
all that this means and entails--he considers that the task of the
Regeneration of this vast unhappy, although singularly gifted, people
would be greatly furthered.
Constitutional deterioration, inherited or acquired, entailing defective
sex-development, causes many young working-women to be deficient in the
maternal instinct, whence spring fondness for and interest in children.
The same defective sex-development, disqualifying them for wifehood,
results in the vast majority of working-class wives lapsing, after a
few years of marriage with normal, virile young men, into haggard,
neurasthenic wrecks.
The whole of this vital and important department of the
woman-organisation is not only ignored in so far as scope for normal
development is concerned, but, despised as subserving inferior and
"merely physical" functions, every other capacity and aptitude is
fostered or forced at the expense of constitutional reserves and
resources which belong, by rights of Life and Love, to this. With the
result that the vast majority of modern women are physically unfitted
for, as an increasing number are temperamentally averse to the
sex-relation--_fons et origo_ of Life.
IV
To such degree the doctrine of Expedience and Self-for-Self-solely has
spread that there are women who seek now to escape wholly the natural
pangs of childbirth. Such persuade their doctors to induce labour a
month or more before term; in order that the smaller-sized infant may be
born with less discomfort to themselves. Others restrict their diet or
abstain from certain foods, in order that the babe, starved thus and
ill-nourished before birth, shall be soft and frail and easier of
delivery. Dread of pain at whatsoever cost to the future of a human
being--and that being their own child--actuates these unnatural and
pusillanimous practices.
It is becoming a vogue for expectant mothers of the wealthier classes to
enter Maternity-Homes, where, in luxurious surroundings, they are
enabled, under spinal anæsthesia (Twilight Sleep), to conclude their
mother-function without suffering or inconvenience; lying in a torpor of
crass insensibility while the greatest of Human Events is taking place
in them. Meantime, the sensitive infant-body is dosed with the powerful
drug circulating in the maternal blood.
But--whither is all this trending? Can we believe that true intelligence
and progress consist in grasping greedily all the pleasures and the
privileges to be had from life, and basely shirking all the hardships?
Can we believe that--suffering and effort being the laws alike of Life
and Progress, and the rungs whereby we have climbed the Evolutionary
ladder--we can continue to climb when, with short-sighted selfishness,
we shall have stripped the ladder of its rungs? The humane use of
chloroform duly assuages the worst pangs. While the fine courage,
fortitude and sweetness wherewith the soul of woman fares forth
naturally upon her Great Adventure, to meet this the Apotheosis of human
pain, prove and still further enhance her nobility. Even weak and flimsy
women rise to greatness at this crisis. Powers they had never glimmered
in themselves emerge and armour them, and--be it remembered--leave
eternal records upon mind and character; striking spiritual roots still
deeper into living function.
V
With characteristic Feminist materialism, Olive Schreiner lightly
dismisses Maternity as a merely "passive" form of labour.
Heaven save the mark! Is it passive so to equip a microscopic cell with
living human powers and aspirations that, within the space of months, it
makes that miraculous pilgrimage of the pre-natal evolutionary ascent
whereby it becomes Man? Passive--so to serve for living environment to
this developing organism as to supply it with the multiple, complex and
diverse elements, material and vital, biological and psychical, required
for the manifold needs and adjustments of its evolving life and
faculties?
During the ante-natal months of this miraculous Ascent, the embryo
"climbs its genealogical tree," as biologists style it. That is to say,
it passes, in turn, through all the countless evolutionary phases of all
the countless evolutionary ages whereof Humanity is the culminating
product. Fashioning out of formlessness, slowly it attains to form.
Shaping, shaping, ever marvellously shaping, it evolves, in succession,
through fish, amphibian and other rudimentary life-grades. Climbing,
climbing, ever marvellously climbing, day by day, to nobler heights, it
is transformed at last to human shape; lower human first, then higher
human, and finally to the highest human possible to its stock, its
parentage, and the resources, physical and psychical, available to it.
It is the most stupendous miracle in Nature; a miracle so sacred and so
tender that every man in passing an expectant mother should mentally bow
the knee. Individually, socially, morally--she may be a person of but
small significance. But because of the mystery of Life enshrined within
her, she is a living Testament of Evolution. The pregnant woman is,
moreover, pregnant with the destiny of Races.
During those ten lunar months there is enacted in the tender darkness of
the mother's womb the whole wonderful drama of the Human
transfiguration. With lightning swiftness, the evolving babe climbs in
the footsteps that its countless ancestors had trod, in forms
innumerable, along the route interminable of the Human Advent. In
flashes of progressive, infinitesimal transitions, through incalculable
phases and mutations, the single cell of double parentage unfolds the
marvel occulted in it. Until at last, the living product stands
triumphant on the topmost branch of its genealogical tree, a perfect
human babe awaiting birth; the last achievement of its Race, the latest
and most perfect bud of its hereditary stock.
In so far as all this occurs subconsciously within the mother, the
materialist may lightly dismiss the evolutionary marvel as a "passive"
form of labour. But although subconscious, these unceasing processes
demand inevitably such proportional vital potential and activities on
her part from whom the powers energising it are derived, as to be a
continued tax and strain upon her strength and health. There are women
who feel this strain but little. A rare few of these because they are so
richly endowed with maternal potence that the subconscious processes
have remained, as Nature doubtless intended, for the most part
subconscious and painless. Far more often, however, when Maternity
exacts but little from the mother, _it is because she is contributing
but little to the child_. I have observed that the finer a child in
physique and in brain, the greater the stress and disability the mother
had suffered prior to its birth.
VI
Indifferent, notwithstanding, to all the vital activities and psychical
evolutions taking place within the mysterious laboratory of the mother's
body; reckless of the circumstance that any interference with, or
hampering of the least of these must inevitably jar, and warp, the
delicate complexes of infantine development, we scruple not to strain
and burden, to harass and deplete, the prospective mother even further
by strenuous breadwinning. Her whole physiology and psychology are
profoundly altered by her momentous condition; by the new adjustments to
the needs of the developing babe, of the maternal circulation and
digestion, assimilation and elimination, mentality and intricate nervous
constitution and processes. Fatigue, noise, turmoil, effort, shock--any
one or all of these which are inseparable from industrial
employment--cannot but injuriously re-act upon the delicate evolutions
mysteriously occurring in her.
The infant brain is complete at birth. From its lowest to its highest
departments, all the marvel of exquisitely-delicate construction and
association of its complex cells is achieved pre-natally. And according
or not as her vital powers have been rich and otherwise unexpended, and
according or not as the embryological processes of development have
occurred in quietude and freedom from strain upon the mother's part,
will be the quality for life, in vigour and in sanity, of her child's
intelligence and character.
VII
In view of those lower biological grades through which the embryo passes
before arriving at the human stage, it is inevitable that maternal
over-fatigue, shock or undue effort may arrest its physical development
temporarily upon any of these lower levels. And such arrest must
inevitably entail some warp or bias of a lower animal phase; which may
so impress itself permanently on embryonic development as to detract
more or less gravely from the final transition.
It is, doubtless, for this reason that many modern humans show in their
configuration, degrees of reversion to ape, sheep, fish and other lower
species.
Shock or nervous perturbation in the expectant mother may occasion, in
the babe, appalling monstrosity, or such minor defects as cleft-palate,
hare-lip, and other deformities. Showing the vital and--inevitably--the
psychological effects on offspring, for good or for evil, of maternal
conditions and impressions.
The Germans record that of infants born during the war, a number are
gravely degenerate of type, an infant-degeneracy attributed by some to
the creed of Hate obsessing German mothers. The same phenomenon is seen
however in the offspring of mothers exhausted by religious preachings
and marchings, in furtherance of their creed of Christian Love.
For Biology recognises no Theology except its own--that of Evolution.
At a representative meeting of London doctors, it was stated recently
that the number of imbecile infants now coming into existence with us is
no less than appalling.
A medical wiseacre has adventured the amazing dictum that _Every infant
is born healthy_! He might, with equal truth, have said that every
infant is born wealthy, or is born a Chinaman. Some infants are born
alive, a great number are born dead. And between those born alive and
healthy and the still-born, lie all the infinite gradations of
constitutional condition between life and health, between disease and
death.
One child inherits from its parents a tuberculous tendency; another a
neurotic, another a strain of alcoholism or other taint. One is born
blind or a hopeless idiot; another with hare-lip or clubbed-foot;
another with congenital heart-disease. One babe is born with a beautiful
head; all its brain-faculties nobly developed and splendidly balanced.
Another is born headless, or with a skull which, from crown to brows, is
a rapid descent--showing lack of all the brain-powers involved in higher
mentality; is born, in short, of criminal inherency.
The degrees in which individuals strive against inherited tendencies
differ greatly, as do the life-conditions wherein their will and moral
power are tested--to make or to break them. Man is not, of course, _the
creature_ merely of his heredity or of his environment. But he whose
mother has equipped him with physical defects instead of with qualities,
even though he fight against his disabilities, is obviously handicapped
for the life-struggle. A great musician may charm fine music from a
poor fiddle, but in no degree so fine as he will bring out of a more
perfect instrument.
VIII
A phenomenon which has baffled vital statisticians is a curious relation
between the Birth-rate and Infant-Mortality. A high birth-rate is found
to be associated with a high rate of infant-mortality; while with a
lower birth-rate, the death-rate among infants and children decreases.
Long and careful observation has left me in no doubt as to the cause of
this phenomenon. Which is, that under strain of disease, of industrial
exhaustion or strenuous activities of any sort, but particularly as
result of _the constitutional drain entailed by pregnancy_, mothers may
so draw upon the vital powers of their children in order to recruit
their own, as to occasion fatal illness in their families.
The evil is so great in its effects, not only upon the health and
constitution of the rising generation, but, as well, upon the physical
and mental development thereof, that such maternal depletion is, I am
assured, a cause of widespread disease among children; of infantile
paralysis, degeneracy and mortality. It is reason enough, in all
conscience, to call for the legalised prohibition of all mothers with
young families from engaging in professional or industrial employment.
Because although such depletion of her children's health is graver in
degree during a mother's pregnancy, at all times over-worked, sickly, or
strenuous women recruit their powers from the constitutional resources
of others. Only, indeed, by such depletion of their neighbours can many
of our present-day neurotic, overactive women (some of them with
ill-nourished bodies and feeble assimilation, but with, nevertheless,
indefatigable energies) contrive to keep going.
Strong-willed, self-centred women, keen in pursuit of business,
athletics or pleasure, will, by sapping the nervous forces of these,
keep all the members of their households--husband, children,
servants--more or less de-vitalised, neurasthenic and characterless; one
or more actually invalided, perhaps.
If nervous energy is, indeed, a complex form of electrical energy, this
nervous interchange is intelligible; obeying the law that bodies
under-charged with electricity charge themselves from bodies more highly
charged, until equilibrium is established.
Who among doctors does not know the wan and listless, semi-paralytic
babes that working-mothers--and most particularly _pregnant_
working-mothers--bring to the consulting-room? The hapless victims lie
limply, or sit hunched upon the woman's lap, nerveless, wasted,
apathetic; faces white and hopeless, abdomen lax and tumid; the blenched
limbs soft as butter, weak and dangling. They are suffering, perhaps,
from some specific ailment, bronchitis, paralysis, gastric or intestinal
troubles; perhaps only from mysterious wasting and inanition. Not seldom
there is an elder child too, white and weak and fretful, and the subject
of "infantilism"; growth stunted, development arrested. Such children,
in their mental hebetude and physical degeneracy, suggest a degree of
cretinism. And in the suggestion, a possible cause appears for the
cretinous offspring of the hard-living, over-worked mothers of Swiss
cantons.
IX
Drummond says of Motherhood:
"_Even on its physical side ... this was the most stupendous task
Evolution ever undertook._"
While on the physical side, we see that Nature has made infancy and
childhood increasingly helpless as species advances in evolutionary
values, in order to call forth increasingly intelligent, and sympathetic
response and resource in the mother. Feminism in _un_making the mother,
is undoing the labours of countless ages of evolutionary advance. The
intensifying mentality of woman, destined for the more subtly
intelligent and sympathetic nurture of the Race's increasingly valuable
and complex offspring, is being diverted, more and more, by Feminist
counsel and practice from human and vital into merely economic channels.
Life is so constituted that its most cruel disabilities and evils are
borne inevitably by the children in the van of the Great March. These
hapless ones it is--soft buds pushing from the Human Tree--that bear the
brunt of the evolutionary impulse.
In the main, the very finest children of The Poor succumb. Because the
higher the organism, the more complex and delicately-fitted to its vital
needs its life-conditions require to be. Briars flourish where
rose-trees die. Degenerate children struggle through where better types
go under. We are not ready, it is true, for exotic humans. But we need
urgently, indeed, all the healthy, intelligent, well-balanced stock we
can produce.
A certain uniformity of type is secured by the expedients of Natural
Selection; by that continual correction of premature evolutionary
unfoldment which results from the checks and prunings of developmental
exigencies--in the necessary acclimatisation and adaptation of the young
and tender organism to environment. And Nature herself provides all the
checks and prunings required, in her tests of teething, of measles, and
the other diseases and trials of infancy and childhood.
The respiration-curves and the brain pulse-waves of young infants show
serious disturbance as result of sudden loud noises. The consequent
nervous jar perturbs both breathing and circulation.
The whole organisation of an infant is so delicate and is so subtly
balanced as to require the gentlest possible treatment. One sees on the
faces of infants and young children a chronic look of painful
expectancy. Their brows are knitted as though to brace their
hyper-sensitive systems for the next distressing shock. Women accustomed
to hard, laborious work (or sports) lose power to adjust their movements
to these delicate needs. And when, unkind and impatient, they fly at the
unfortunates and shake or beat or scold them violently, they have no
suspicion that for hours afterwards, perhaps for days, the children's
nervous systems may be so shattered and disorganised, digestion and
assimilative powers so impaired, as to interfere gravely with growth and
development. Degrees of "shock," akin to shell-shock, result from such
maternal violence and chronic terrorism; occasioning feeble-mindedness,
morbid timidity, mental hebetude and, moreover, subconscious
impressions, which, later in life, may emerge as obsessions, or as other
forms of insanity. Fear is the most shattering and paralysing of the
emotions. Yet not only brought up by hand, the majority of our little
ones are brought up by _violent_ hand.
All day long and during every moment of it, a thousand delicate
processes of growth and unfoldment and of intricate adjustments are
going on mysteriously within the shaping brain and body of a child.
Subconsciously, these are a continued tax and strain; making him
hyper-sensitive, irritable, cross, perhaps, for causes that appear
inadequate. A child is like a convalescent, in that he uses up rapidly
for growth and development all the nutritive material and vital energy
at his disposal. This is true of healthy, well-nurtured children. What
then of these child-martyrs of The Poor, who in addition to the strain
of growth, are ill-fed, poisoned by unsuitable foods; are sickly,
rickety, bronchitic, dyspeptic, syphilitic, phthisical? Nevertheless,
all the maternal care these miserables receive are such rough dregs of
kindness and of patience as may be left over from the toil of their
working-mothers' hard, exhausting days.
It is no less than monstrous that our laws allow the nation's babes and
children--to whom are due all the best resources of maternal care and
tenderness and duly-trained maternal powers--to be thus martyred. As
substitute for the home and for their mothers--which are every child's
birthright--more and more, infants and young children are consigned now
to Crèches; chill institutions of alien atmosphere, alien surroundings,
alien nurses, where, unmothered, they are ciphers among other unmothered
alien ciphers. Yet babies and young children are so pathetically
constituted that they prefer blows from their mothers to caresses from
strangers.
X
The life-story written in the faces of the great majority of our
Twentieth-Century babes and children is a terrible one, in its
revelation of tortured helplessness, hopeless resignation, unnatural
fortitude, blank despair. See them sunk, limp and dejected, in their
prams or go-carts, eyes staring forward on the dreary waste their lives
are; limbs dangling, like those of toys with broken springs.
In cities, mothers, ignorant of the shock and injury which noise and
turmoil inflict upon these sensitive brains and nerves, wheel them amid
jostling crowds--in order that they themselves may enjoy the excitements
of the shops. At the low level of their prams, they breathe air vitiated
by the passers-by; are in the exhausting whirl and press of swirling
nerve-currents. In their poor ill-made carriages, they are jerked
abruptly, now up, now down, at every kerb; with no more care or
tenderness than though they were baskets of clothes. They sit patient,
leaden, apathetic; cruelly strapped for hours together in one position;
neither pulse of health nor spirit in them.
In cold weather, their heads but thinly thatched with hair are bare. So
too their limbs; though warmth is life to young, developing creatures.
In hot weather, the sun beats mercilessly down upon their hatlessness,
their exquisitely-sensitive brains but slightly shielded by their thin
un-ossified skulls. Degrees of sunstroke, with lifelong injury to health
and faculty, occur. They knit their pale brows in fruitless attempt to
defend their weak eyes from the glare. Many keep their lids close shut,
to protect both eyes and brain from the nerve-shattering solar rays,
which are far too powerful to be allowed to fall, untempered, upon an
infant's highly-sensitive body. With closed eyes, the poor things miss
all the joys of their ride; the colour and movement about them, and the
spurs to intelligence these should supply. Their unobservant mothers and
nurses suppose them to be sleeping!
Children old enough to walk are walked to stages--sometimes to extremes
of exhaustion. You may see them dragging heavily along, with wan,
exhausted faces; peevish and cross, and scolded and shaken and slapped
for being peevish and cross. Exhaustion from such over-fatigue will keep
a child below par for days; checking its growth and development--to say
nothing of its happiness. Children derive but little benefit from their
holiday changes to sea or country, because of the exertions forced upon
them, or the too strenuous play to which they are exhorted.
Children who go bare-headed suffer, in large number, from eye-strain,
with resulting permanent frown. As too, from ear-ache and from
ear-diseases; from headache and toothache. In as many as 75 per cent. of
school-children, vision is defective.
The obsessing aim of many mothers is to "harden" their children. Yet no
more than a clay model in the shaping may be hardened and set, should
the process be applied to children in the shaping.
Healthy children are inevitably _delicate_ children, because of that
highly-sensitive re-activity to surroundings which not only
characterises but _conduces_ to the developmental state. (Such delicacy
must not be confused with _sickliness_.) The finer the organisation the
longer it takes (within normal limits) to come to full growth. Our
greatest men and women were delicate in youth. Hardy children are always
of inferior type--for the most part, plain and shrewd and unimaginative,
insensitive, unlovable. They have matured (have adapted to environment,
that is) precociously. Evolution of higher faculty has been prematurely
arrested in them.
Modern children are described as "super-children," for their abnormal
sharpness and worldly perspicacity. They are merely precocious, which is
to say, they have missed their childhood. And too early development
entails inevitably early decline. Not only America, but England now has
produced a grey-haired boy of ten!
No less amazing than it is lamentable is the light neglect by the
majority of cultured mothers, of their grave maternal obligations. From
earliest infancy, they hand over their children, body and soul, to the
ignorance, the carelessness, the cruelty (not seldom to the viciousness
even), of stranger-women of the uncultured classes; women of whose
character and disposition they know nothing, and who are only too often
unfitted by nature, by upbringing, and by habit for this most delicate,
difficult and important of all human tasks.
It is by no means uncommon to find prostitutes, grown too old for a
trade that has vitiated every cell and secretion of their bodies (to say
nothing of mental vitiation), officiating in the capacity of nursemaid
to children of culture.
Every child is a new creation, with a highly specialised organisation of
mind and of body. For the nurture and best development of these, are
required high degrees of intelligence, of understanding and of sympathy
in treatment. To realise its idiosyncrasies, constitutional and
temperamental, and to adapt to these in its rearing and surroundings,
with respect to diet, exercise, play, sleep, moral supervision and
discipline, demand intuitive perceptiveness, intelligent discrimination,
and practical resource such as no other department of life demands--or
is worth.
Notwithstanding all this, mothers who can afford to shelve their duty
upon paid substitutes abandon the most complex and sensitive, the most
beautiful and valuable, and moreover, the most helpless thing in
Nature--the mind of a child--to be shaped and coloured, during all the
most impressionable years of its development, by persons with neither
aptitude nor faculty for this supremely complex and difficult function.
In place of so adapting its environment to the child-organism as to
enable it, fenced within the tender mother-fold, to enjoy to the full
and to develop to the full the lovely, inspiring beliefs and illusions
of natural childhood, latter-day mothers now cruelly rob their little
ones of this fructifying phase, by prematurely forcing worldly knowledge
and distrusts upon them, in precocious adjustment to mature view-points
and conditions from which they should be carefully secluded.
In that mysterious Mind-department, the Subconsciousness, with its
highly sensitised brain-tablets, every smallest happening of a
lifetime--scenes, experiences, mental impressions--are photographed, to
be stored for ever after as ineffaceable records. And though, perhaps,
wholly forgotten, these subconscious records nevertheless colour and
influence for ever after every thought and impulse and action.
Sometimes they flash up as memories. They can be recalled under
hypnotism.
The young mind is like an unfurnished house. The rooms are empty. There
are no pictures on the walls. But its unblotted, exquisitely-sensitised
spaces are ceaselessly filming indelible records of everything seen and
felt and apprehended. One impression may correct, or may distort,
others. Or that right point-of-view which is judgment may focus all
impressions in the true perspective which reveals their true values and
proportions. But until such judgment has been formed by mental
development, it is vitally important that all the impressions absorbed
by young minds, whether of their life-conditions and associates, of
books or of plays, shall be fair and simple and wholesome.
Thus, the foundations of mind and of character are laid in clean,
intelligising and uplifting influences.
XI
While we deplore, as appalling, that during the first fifteen months of
War, 109,725 of our fighting men were killed or died, the returns of the
Registrar-General show that during the twelve months of the peace
preceding War, _there died 140,957 of the nation's children_, at less
than five years old; 95,608 of these at less than a year old.
Consider it! War, with its destructive engines of bomb and shell, more
or less swiftly and painlessly kills just over a hundred thousand men,
in the course of fifteen months. Peace, with its destructive
transgressions against Nature, kills in less time a far greater number
of defenceless babes and children, by slow and more or less torturing
forms of disease. Babies, even when unhealthy, come into existence
endowed with a certain Life-potential. And they struggle hard and
painfully to live. It is amazing to see the odds against which the poor
things battle; and battle successfully. It is only the fearfulness of
the odds to which most of them are subjected that succeeds in killing
them.
Pain and suffering are spurs to adult development. In children they are
as needlessly cruel as they are permanently injurious. Far from fitting,
they _unfit_ them for life.
The ratio of mortality is no guide, of course, to the immeasurable
injuries wrought to mind and body by these same fearful odds upon the
children who survive; and who survive, maimed, diseased, degenerate, to
live out lives of disability, of joylessness and ineffectiveness.
It will be said--and said truly--that much of this high infant-mortality
results, not from maternal omissions, but from paternal commissions.
Well, that alas! is another of the terrible wrongs against children
which lie at the door of the sex. Were there not women whose lives are
passed in engendering and transmitting the direst of all the diseases
human evil has bred, the hapless imbecile and paralytic, the blind, the
deaf, the ulcerous, the slowly-wasting, tortured little ones who fill
our asylums and hospitals would not be.
At every turn the truth is more and more impressed, that the fate of
Humanity rests, in some or other form, with its women. Woman is
Redeemer; or she is Destroyer. Because, while man's province is the
material, with its roots in temporal things, woman's province is the
vital, with its roots and stem and blossom in functioning Life.
The burning wrongs of women? Alas! what are they beside the burning
wrongs of helpless babes and children?
* * * * *
XII
An anomaly of Feminism is the admission, on the one hand, that
Motherhood was woman's most valuable function, and her greatest claim
on the community in days of barbarism, and the denial, on the other,
that it is her most important function in civilisation.
The illogic of the position is patent.
That the production of savages should be primitive woman's chiefest
claim to honour; while the production of highly-evolved and complex
human beings should be civilised woman's least.
The potence and the values of fine motherhood are proven by the fact
that every great, or good, or clever man or woman has been the child of
a great, or good, or clever mother. Not of one who has made her mark in
the world of affairs. Such, for the most part, have not reproduced at
all. And when they have been mothers their children have been notably of
inferior calibre.
On the other hand, bad men and bad women have in nearly every instance
been sons or daughters of bad women.
Examples innumerable might be cited to show that both genius and moral
greatness are variations (mutations) of the human species which have
their origin in mother-genius and greatness.
Great scientists, it has been noted, have been sons of women
characterised by intense love of Truth. The love of Truth in the
mother--for Truth's sake--became in the executive, concrete mentality of
the son an intuitive apprehension of the truths of Science, and an eager
and indomitable aspiration to render these in terms of intellection.
* * * * *
Shall woman leave to man no field at all of natural supremacy? Shall she
not be content with her beautiful part as generatrix of Faculty, but
must seek to be exponent too?
That all women do not marry--cannot marry, indeed, because of their
preponderance in number over the other sex--is no reason for dissembling
the truth that in wifehood and motherhood lie woman's most vital and
valuable rôles.
Nor is it warrant for training the whole sex as though none were
destined to fulfil this, their natural and noblest--if not always, their
happiest vocation.
XIII
Feminism repudiates, from time to time, the charge against it of
belittling Motherhood. Yet how can it profess to credit the maternal
function with due values or significance when it denies the obligations
and responsibilities thereof, asks no economic concessions for it? And
when, in place of demanding privileges indispensable to its exercise and
complete fulfilment, it makes no distinction, in respect of work and the
worker, between childless and unmarried women and mothers and expectant
mothers? And this despite the fact that, for a period of eighteen months
at very least, the mother's best vital resources belong by rights,
biological and moral, to each babe she produces--nine for the pre-natal
building of its body and brain, and nine for lactation.
Her moral obligation to nurse, and the criminality of her omission when
able to do so, have been emphasised as follows by Sir J.
Crichton-Browne:
"Dr. Robertson, Medical Officer of Health for Birmingham has shown
that while the infant-mortality of breast-fed infants is 7·8 _per
1000 births_, that of infants receiving no breast-milk is 232 _per_
1000. And Sir Arthur Newsholme, Medical Adviser to the Local
Government Board, has shown that the probability of death from
epidemic diarrhoea is 54 _times greater among infants fed on cow's
milk_ than among those fed on breast-milk, and 150 _times greater_
amongst infants fed on condensed milk.
"But it is not merely in a high infant death-rate that the evil
effects of the want of breast-milk stand confessed. Where it does
not kill it often maims, and is responsible for malnutrition,
rickets, tuberculosis, and a multiplicity of ailments. Every doctor
is familiar with the alabaster babies, flabby, limp, languid, and
painfully pallid, who have never tasted their natural nutriment."
Dr. Truby King records the interesting fact that the finest calf-skin,
known as Paris Calf, is obtained from calves reared by their mothers, in
order to provide the finest veal for Paris. So supple and smooth-haired
and superior is the skin of these mother-suckled creatures that dealers
are able to distinguish it at once from the skin of calves that have
been artificially fed.
About this, Mr. Horace G. Regnart kindly supplies me with the following
significant data:
"If we feed a calf, 'on the bucket,' the calf's coat loses its shine and
becomes dull. We say it is 'dead.' A couple of days is sufficient to
deaden the coat. And it takes three weeks or a month 'on a cow' to get
the gloss back. _A quart of milk direct from the cow is as good as a
gallon of milk out of a bucket._
"We do not attempt to feed our female calves so well as we feed the
bulls. It is too costly. Our heifers are put on 'the bucket' when three
days old. I buy a cow to rear my bull-calves on. I once reared a bull on
'the bucket' satisfactorily. But I gave him twelve gallons of new milk
every day after he was five months old, and kept it up till he was
fourteen months. _One cow that gives three gallons does a calf just as
well as twelve gallons_ viâ _the bucket, and is much cheaper._ Some
crack bulls have three and four five-gallon cows at once, and go to
Shows with all their nurses in attendance.
"Once I reared a bull as we rear the heifers. But he was a failure. His
daughters are only half the size they ought to be."
(An example of direct developmental inheritance--in terms of
deterioration--from father to daughter.)
XIV
Comparing a calf with a human baby, it becomes self-evident that the
diet suited for the large, crude creature which trots about on four legs
shortly after birth must be wholly unsuited to the delicate digestion
and the subtle psychological needs of the small and complex,
highly-organised human infant, which remains so long a helpless infant.
The all-important _proteid_ of every order of creature differs from that
of every other. Before any form of alien _proteid_ can be built into the
body of a living organism, the digestion and assimilation of this
creature must first have laboriously disintegrated and reconstructed it
to the form of its own individual _proteid_.
The Irish tradition that persons not nursed during infancy by their
mothers are beings without souls has much to justify it. Even the
ill-nourished, sickly babes of working-mothers have an essentially
_human_ look in eyes and features, possess far more of nervous power,
and are of appreciably higher and more intelligent psychology than are
the bottle-fed infants of the cultured.
The bottle-fed start handicapped for life, both in constitution and
mentality. It is safe to say that all great men and women have been
suckled by their mothers or have come of stock thus humanly nurtured.
That they were thus humanly nurtured during their momentous first nine
months of life, is the reason, doubtless, why so many of our greatest
men have sprung from humble origin.
The incapacity of a mother to nourish the babe she has borne should be
known for a mark of degeneracy--sign, too, that she was unfitted to
have borne a child, because deficient in the vital reserve requisite to
carry her maternal function to its normal biological and psychological
conclusion. Just as a statesman or a general would be held unfitted for
_his_ function, if he should lack the physical and mental enterprise to
complete his national undertakings.
That for the nine months preceding its birth the infant obtains its
nourishment directly from its mother's blood, and for nine months after
birth it obtains this, normally, from her milk--_her_ digestive
processes having so assimilated the originally brute and vegetable
proteids of her food that these are now _human_ proteids, and are ready,
therefore, to be built into the infant's body with the least possible
tax upon its own assimilative powers--proves a number of important
facts.
First: that an infant's digestive powers remain, normally, for nine
months after birth, in a more or less embryonic state; slowly and
gradually developing capacity to convert the products of the brute and
vegetable kingdoms into forms suitable for building into its human
organisation. (Just as we see the digestive organs of the child
progressively developing power to assimilate an adult dietary.)
Secondly: that the infant's digestion remains thus undeveloped obviously
in order that as little as possible of its vital power may be expended
in the complex processes of assimilation, all available vital-power
being urgently required for its exhaustingly rapid brain- and
body-building.
Thirdly: that where an artificial diet forces precocious development
upon the infant-digestion--since all precocity is degeneracy, all the
organs concerned in digestion will be, necessarily, more or less
structurally defective and functionally inefficient; as a consequence of
not having been permitted time and rest to develop slowly and stably
over the normal allotted period. (Proof is supplied by the premature
development of teeth, which occurs in artificially-fed babies some
months before dentition is normally due. And these teeth and those that
succeed them are of such perishable structure that present-day children
need perpetual dental repairs.)
Fourthly: that such misapplication of vital resources for the premature
development and abnormal functions of precocious digestive organs
entails inevitably corresponding loss of vital power for general
development.
Fifthly--and by no means lastly, but perhaps most important of all: that
since the infant-digestion is quite incapable of properly converting
brute and vegetable-proteids into human proteid, infants artificially
fed must necessarily _build into their brains and bodies lower-grade
proteids_--and proteids so imperfectly assimilated as to be something
less than human, and, accordingly, more or less brute or vegetable still
in their inherences. And since all living cells and tissues reproduce
upon the plan of the parent-cells and tissues they were derived from, it
is clear that the abnormal cells and tissues constructed of these
half-brute, or half-vegetable proteids must be abnormal; unstable and
degenerate, and prone to lapse readily to still further degrees of
deterioration and disease.
Hence a source of our neurotic, neurasthenic, adenoid-afflicted,
mentally-defective and otherwise diseased children. Hence too the
increasing criminality--which is _animality_, of course--that
characterises a considerable proportion of the rising generation.
Each further generation artificially fed in infancy can but deviate
still further from the Human Normal, becoming ever less human; brain and
body-cells reproducing themselves, throughout life, on the plan of their
infant-construction of half-brute or half-vegetable proteids. One sees
the ox in the dull, soulless eyes, in the bovine flesh, the stolid
faces, and in the crude animal natures of many modern little ones, to
whom calf-diet was fed before they had developed the digestive power of
transforming this into substance highly vitalised enough for human brain
and body-building. And the less their systems have rebelled against and
have rejected, but, on the contrary, have conformed to and have thriven
upon such brute-diet, the cruder are their organisations. Of this order
are the insensate child-monsters who win prizes at Baby-shows.
To one who realises that, of all the powers of Woman, the ability to
nurse her babe is second in importance only to her first and vital
function of producing it, the cry and clamour and impassioned fallacy
that have swirled around the trivial detail of her Suffrage-disabilities
show grotesque beside the human tragedy of her increasing biological
disability and her increasing psychical aversion to fulfil this
indispensable and sacred mother-office. To despise which, as being a
function woman possesses in common with the humbler creatures, is as
narrow-sighted as it would be to scorn the genius of Shakespeare because
both dog and pig, poor things! possess brains. Moreover, in forfeiting
this maternal faculty, woman reverts to the mode of those crude
rudimentary species _below_ the Mammalia.
"... _Each mother's breast_
_Feeds a flower of blue, beyond all blessing blest._"
Notwithstanding all this, Feminism, in its grim materialism, blind to
the mystical beauty of Life and the sacredness of Individuality, regards
women mainly as parts of an economic machinery. And to serve as such, it
standardises all in body, mind and aptitude, to economic ends; the young
and tender girls whose shaping frames are shaping to become the mystical
looms of evolving Humanity; the young wives in whom love and marriage
have set mysterious processes in motion; the young pregnant mothers in
whom the shuttle of Life is already marvellously flying, interweaving
the luminous threads of a soul with a body of flesh.
Nature made women ministrants of Love and Life, for the creation of an
ever more healthful and efficient, a nobler and more joyous Humanity.
Feminism degrades them to the status of industrial mechanisms, whereof
the commercial products are the chiefest values, and children no more
than bye-products.
* * * * *
And what bye-products they are! God help them!--Who alone can help
them--this pathetic rubble of pallid, sickly, suffering, and dejected
infant- and child-Life; the violet-hued babies, with their dull eyes
glazed by misery, their leaden, half-paralysed limbs; the blind and
crippled, halt and deaf, the imbecile and feeble-minded children,
apathetic, neurasthenic, joyless; as too, on the other hand, the
low-browed, sturdy and soulless, or the debased and evil--All the
generation of degeneracy which our deteriorate and enfeebled looms of
womanhood are grinding out to-day.
Though shut from sight and thought, in the prisons, hospitals and other
institutions of our modern civilisations is an ever-swelling,
ever-rising, further-menacing tide of diseased, defective, insane and
criminal mankind, product of ours and of those others' violations of
Natural Law; clogging the River of Life, choking the Springs of
Evolution, damming the current of Progress.
CHAPTER VII
FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DESTRUCTIVE OF WOMANLY ATTRIBUTES, MORALE
AND PROGRESS
"A woman versed in that finest of all fine arts, the beautifying of
daily life."
I
In _Woman and Labour_, Miss Schreiner laments as follows, picturesquely
but speciously: "Our spinning-wheels are all broken; in a thousand huge
buildings steam-driven looms, guided by a few hundred thousands of hands
(often those of men) produce the clothings of half the world; and we
dare no longer say, proudly, as of old, that we and we alone clothe our
peoples!"
A scene is conjured of brute-men with clubs savagely attacking and
destroying hapless women's innocent spinning-wheels, as Mrs. Arkwright
ruthlessly destroyed her husband's cherished models. Yet who, regarding
the subject dispassionately, sees cause for anything but gladness that
modern woman has not still to spin the linen of her household and the
garments of its members--for anything but thankfulness for that
intelligent male-brain which carried the woman-invention of the needle
to its higher adaptations in the weaving and the sewing-machine? Who can
justly regret that the taking over by men, in factories, of wholesale
brewings and bakings, jam-makings, and so forth, has relieved the other
sex of ceaseless drudgeries; and in so relieving it of drudgeries of
house-keeping has left it free to develop the higher and the more
intellectual arts of home-making?
"_Slowly but determinedly, as the old fields of labour close up and are
submerged behind us, we demand entrance into the new_," Miss Schreiner
affirms. And to emphasise our determination, the demand is printed in
her book, as I have reproduced it, in Italics.
Losing sight altogether of the inestimable benefits to woman secured by
the intervention of men between her and the hardest and the most
debasing employments, she further protests, "any attempt to divide the
occupations in which male and female intellects and wills should be
employed, must be to attempt a purely artificial and arbitrary
division."
"Our cry is, _We take all labour for our province!_"
Nevertheless, clever and intuitive woman as she is, she confesses (now
the Italics are mine), "_It may be with sexes as with races, the
subtlest physical differences between them may have their fine mental
correlatives_." And yet, oh why, having come upon so promising a vein of
truth, did she not follow it to its logical conclusions, and find in it
all the answers to her extremist demands, and, with these, the
refutations of her Feminist plea and claims?
Men and women are unlike not only in "_the subtlest physical
differences_" which "_may have their fine mental correlatives_." They
are unlike in the most obvious and basic facts of physical constitution
and of biological function. And these must inevitably entail mental and
temperamental correlatives more intrinsic and farther reaching even than
the subtler physical differences she recognises as being possibly
modifying factors in psychical aptitude.
Advocating soldiering even for the sex, Miss Schreiner says: " ...
Undoubtedly, it has not been only the peasant-girl of France, who has
carried latent and hid within her person the gifts that make the supreme
general."
Here is fallacy again. Joan of Arc was, beyond all things, woman. Not
the man in her, but the woman in her, and her Supra-conscious womanly
attributes it was which (inspiring her by way of mystical voices and
visions) impelled her so to transcend her woman-nature that without
knowledge of arts military or of strategic science, as, too, without
experience, she was able, by intuitive prescience, to lead her
compatriots to victory. For the soldiers, perceiving the Light in her
face, followed in awed confidence whithersoever she led.
In earlier days of civilisation, this intuitive and visionary faculty of
woman was recognised and honoured.
II
In _The Human Woman_, Lady Grove presents a wholly contrary view to Miss
Schreiner's.
With her, woman suffers less in being shut out from the labour-market
than in having been driven from the home.
"The woman has been driven from her home into the labour-market.
The fact of 82 per cent. of the women of this country working for
their living is an ugly rebuff to the pretty platitudes about the
home," she says.
" ... The stupendous mistake that has been made up to now is in
supposing that it is men's judgment only that should decide
questions, and hence the hopeless state of unravelled misery
existing in the world, side by side with all the wealth and wonders
of the age.
"If we examine the conditions of the working-classes, after years
and years of male legislation, what a hideous set of conditions we
find. Intemperance, bad-housing and the cruel struggle for
existence among the poorer classes. And yet we spend over
£22,000,000 annually on the education of these people. Surely there
is something wrong somewhere. What is it that we, seeing this
condition of things at our very door, have, as women, to be so
grateful for in male legislation?"
The writer fails wholly to perceive that these factors she deplores as
due to defective masculine legislation are effects less of faulty
measures than of faulty Humanity. Measures are the gauge of the men who
frame them. And men are very much the measure of the mothers who bore
them. Those which she properly characterises as the "hideous" conditions
of the working-classes, "intemperance, bad-housing and the cruel
struggle for existence" are circumstances legislation cannot remedy
unless the hearts of legislators are moved to do this, and their hands
are empowered, moreover, to do it, by the collective will of those they
represent.
Except all are content to subordinate their personal interests to the
general welfare, and to improve their personal morale for their own and
for the common good, Acts of Parliament can do but little. Drunkenness
can be penalised by legislation, difficulties put in the way of
obtaining drink. But intemperance can be effectually stamped out only by
individual men and women so rising to higher levels of thought and
self-control as voluntarily to become sober; or by men and women so
improving in brain and constitution that the craving for drink--now
recognised as a disease--no longer obsesses them.
Acts of Parliament may condemn insanitary and defective dwellings, may
compel landlords to repair them to degrees of decency and comfort; may
pull them down and build others in their stead. But none of these
measures will eradicate the bad housing of dirty and comfortless, or of
demoralised and demoralising homes. The best house possible becomes bad
housing for its occupants when the woman at the head of it fails to do
her duty therein, in consequence of industrial labour which leaves her
neither time nor energy to make a clean, well-ordered, cosy and
inspiring home of it; or because her own idleness or ignorance, her
drunkenness or worthlessness, results in her neglect of it. Human
conditions, like human measures, result from the personalities, good or
bad, capable or incapable, of those who create them.
III
The Feminist's faith in the masculine prerogative of Legislation, as
being a possible panacea--had _she_ but part in it--for every ill
beneath the sun, is one of her gravest disqualifications for taking part
therein.
Legislators who are over-confident in the efficacy of The Law express
their over-confidence in terms of premature and unduly-coercive
legislation. Procedure which, more often than not, frustrates the ends
to which it was designed by the methods taken to secure these. Progress
is personal, moreover. It is the sum of the advance of individuals.
Legislation is the statutory _formulation_ of public opinion; it is not
the _source_ of this. It merely crystallises public opinion. But before
crystallisation of thought (as of chemical) sets in, saturation-point
must first have been reached throughout the medium wherein it occurs.
Were any other development required to show the utter inadequacy of
Legislation to attain its ends--when not reinforced by personal
co-operation and initiative--this has been supplied in that latter-day
demoralisation of young girls, the consequences whereof will be vastly
more baneful and farther-reaching in contributing to national decline
than even that other dire factor of the flower of our virile youth
struck down before its prime.
Girls are fully protected by law to the age of sixteen. Yet many of the
demoralised girls seen consorting freely with Tommy or Reggie, according
to their class, are well below that age. Legislation is powerless,
however, failing parental vigilance and co-operation to invoke its aid.
Nevertheless, with its characteristic blind confidence in the male
prerogative of Law, Feminism now advocates raising "the age of consent"
to eighteen. But to do this would no more protect the girl under
eighteen than the existing law protects the girl under sixteen--or, for
that matter, protects the girl of twelve. Law can do little or nothing
unless, as happens so seldom and happens too late, parents requisition
its assistance for menace or for punishment. Mothers themselves should
see to it that their little daughters have neither temptation nor
opportunity to consent to their own ruin.
IV
We saw lately a militant rising of women against men and their laws; the
object being to compel concessions from the male by way of violence. And
so short-sighted were the leaders of this Movement that not only did
they seek to prove their right to make laws, by breaking them, but they
showed themselves ignorant of the first rudiments of combat by electing
to fight the enemy with his own weapon--that weapon of Force which is
man's especial Fitness and Woman's Unfitness. Woman's Unfitnesses have
prevailed, it is true, in the counsels of progress, but, obviously, they
have not prevailed, nor can they ever prevail by being pitted directly
against masculine strengths. Her way of supremacy is one by far more
subtle and sublime.
The leaders of Militancy seem never to have suspected, moreover, that
while they were demanding to be liberated from all womanly privileges,
they were, nevertheless, waging their deplorable skirmishes from behind
a strong wall of such privileges. Men who should have adopted such
tactics would have received but short and scant shrift.
Were the sex to be confronted, indeed, with that "Fair field and no
favour!" for which some members of it are so clamorous, these would find
it a grievously different thing from the privilege they paint it.
Marcel Prévost has said that when men find women competing with them in
fields of Labour, to degrees injurious to masculine interests, they will
turn and strike them in the face. There are indications to the contrary,
however. Among decadent races and savages, the emasculate sons of
deteriorate mothers assert their masculine authority otherwise.
Far from combating their women's right to work, they force them to
work--and to work in support of the males!
More and more every day, civilised men, indeed, released by
working-wives from their natural obligation to maintain the family, are
seen so to have lapsed from their sense of virile responsibility as to
be coming further and further to shelve upon such working-wives the
burden of the family support. Among the labouring and artisan classes,
the wife's contribution to the exchequer leaves the husband more money
to spend on drink or on gambling; or on both. In superior classes, too,
it leaves husbands with more money to spend on amusement--of one sort or
another.
Responsibility and effort are natural spurs to masculine development.
Relieve the male of these and he degenerates. As woman released from
child-bearing and the duties entailed by the family, degenerates
rapidly. We can no more improve on The Plan than we can improve without
each and every appointed factor of it.
V
Another disastrous blunder of Feminism is to make for equal wage for men
and women.
The higher wage of men springs, economically, from the fact that the
industrial output of women is, normally, less than that of men. But
there is a deeper, and a biological significance involved. Which is,
that men's greater output of work results from more of their energy of
brain and body being available to them for work, because far less of
their vital power is locked-up in them for Race-perpetuation and
nurture. There is the implication also that man being the natural
breadwinner of the family, his wage should suffice for its support.
A system of equal wages for the sexes would press as cruelly upon women
as it would be disastrous to the Race. Because it would compel woman,
despite the biological disabilities that handicap her economically, to
force her powers to masculine standards of work and output. It would,
moreover, by qualifying her to support the family, serve as cogent
excuse for her husband to shirk his bounden duty.
The crux of the demand for equal pay for equal work is that, because of
her natural lesser strength and endurance, when a woman is doing work
identical in nature and equal in quantum to that of a man, it means that
_she_ is doing _more_ than a woman's work, and is overtaxing and
injuring her constitution, therefore; or it means that _he_ is doing
_less_ than a man's work, and is "slacking," therefore.
A further important issue is that when rendered too easy by both husband
and wife earning wage, marriage is entered upon far too lightly, and at
too early and irresponsible ages, than happens when the whole burden of
support rests with the man. Moreover, in such case masculine selection
makes only too often for economic rather than for human values in the
wife. A man upon whom is to fall the whole tax of supporting the home
and the family regards marriage more seriously, and delays it until he
is more mature of years and of settled position. Moreover, he chooses
more carefully. And the Race benefits proportionally.
In manufacturing towns, with opportunity for both husband and wife
earning wage, boy-and-girl marriages, feckless, discordant homes, and
sickly degenerate, neglected children are the rule.
That women should be paid for work they do, a salary enabling them to
live honestly and in comfort, goes without saying. Economics should be
adjusted on a far higher basis than that mainly of a competitive
struggle which allows the employer to fix wages less according to the
value of work done, than by the number of persons at his mercy, who, in
their eagerness to live, will undersell their values and thus cheapen
labour. Nevertheless economics have, in a degree, adapted to the
evolutionary trend. Because, in the main, the more skilled and difficult
tasks are more highly remunerated than the less skilled, and are
performed by the more fit. And not only are these better qualified to
expend such higher remuneration intelligently, and with benefit to
themselves and to the community, but they are able to secure thereby
those better conditions which are the due and the need of families
higher in the scale of humanity, and requiring, therefore, higher
conditions of nurture.
The cases of colliers and of other rough-grade humans who earn wage
beyond their mental calibre to expend intelligently, show how an income
too large for its possessor leads to coarse and demoralising
extravagances, rather than to personal happiness or elevation. (The like
is true of many plutocrats.) War has shown us boys' lives wrecked by the
same factor. No greater fallacy exists than that of supposing progress
to lie in freeing persons from all disabilities--poverty, and other
restrictive conditions.
Wives should be legally entitled to a just proportion of their husband's
income, as a _right_, not merely as dole. This, in recognition of their
invaluable work in home-making, and of their invaluable service to the
State in producing and rearing worthy citizens for it.
VI
Masculine legislation, making all the while, in the face of economic
difficulties, for the ever further release of women and children from
the more laborious and debasing tasks, has made compulsory, in their own
and in the interests of their unborn infants, a month of respite for
expectant mothers, and a further month for mothers after delivery.
Extending thus to these poor victims--beasts of the burden of toil, and
beasts of the burden of sex--a mercy and consideration wholly lacking in
the Feminist propaganda. For this latter repudiates indignantly all need
for concession or privilege to wifehood or to motherhood, equally with
womanhood.
To justify the claim for equality in all things, women must be forced,
at all cost, to identical standards of work and production. To ask
privileges and concessions would be to confess, in the sex, weaknesses
and disabilities that must disqualify it from economic identity with the
other.
Far, indeed, from such vain-glorious and disastrous straining for
equality, the leaders of the Woman's Movement should, before all else,
have demanded insistently still further industrial concessions and
privileges for a sex handicapped for industry, by Nature. First and
foremost, they should come into the open and boldly proclaim--what it is
useless to deny, indeed--that in the function of parenthood, at all
events, men and women are wholly dissimilar. They should reject outright
all tinkerings and half-measures for relief of this great human
disability, whereof one sex only bears the stress and burden for the
benefit of both, and for survival of nations and races.
Not only for the pitiful respite of a month before and a month after
the birth of her child, should the mother be prohibited from industrial
labour. By that time all the damage will have been done. The power that
should have been put into the evolution of her infant will have been put
into the revolutions of a lathe. The life-potential that should have
gone to build its living bone and brain and muscle will have gone to
feed the life of a machine. The breath she will have drawn for it will
have been contaminated by the dust and fumes of toil. Its poor nascent
brain and faculties will have been dulled and depleted, stupefied and
vitiated by the stress and turmoil of its mother's labours. Only the
dregs of the maternal powers will have been invested in the Race. The
finest and most valuable will have gone to swell the balance-sheets of
Capital.
The trumpet-cry of The Woman's Movement should be, indeed, _The Absolute
Prohibition of young Wives and Mothers from all Industrial and
Professional employment!_
Such a prohibition, by lessening the competition of the labour-market,
and by thus increasing the value of labour (which the flood of female
industry inevitably cheapens) would automatically so increase the wage
of men as to make of these true living wage, sufficient for the
maintenance of home and family. Such a prohibition would, moreover, so
diminish the competitive pressure among women as to make it possible for
unmarried women, the future wives and mothers, as well as for the older
spinsters and widows, to select in every fitting trade and industry,
work suited to the lesser strength and endurance of the female brain and
body.
VII
Nothing has characterised the Feminist Movement throughout so much as
lack of knowledge of human nature (both masculine and feminine), lack
of prevision to foresee the trend of new developments, lack of intuitive
apprehension to gauge the issues of such trend. Its leaders have never
suspected, accordingly, that, in propaganda and in practice, they have
been tampering with a great biological ordinance; and that, in
obliterating women's Sex-characteristics, they have been destroying that
counterpoise of human powers and faculties whereon progress and
permanence rest, and that morale which is the inspiration of advance.
Regarding their own masculine Rationalism as the ideal and standard for
all women, they have believed it possible to shape all women
successfully thereto. Nature is not to be thwarted, however. And when we
destroy the balance of the Normal, abnormal developments--gravely
mischievous and singularly difficult to deal with--crop up and require
to be dealt with. One may raise the familiar cry that some modern
developments are due to our being in "a transition stage." But from that
remote day when Nature first evolved us as a race of _amoebæ_, further
to evolve into the human species, we have been always in "transition
stages." Normal transition upwards is so slow an impulse as to be
well-nigh imperceptible, however. Rapid change invariably betokens
regression--descent being vastly easier and swifter in movement than
ascent is.
Deplorably mistaken has been a doctrine of Emancipation which, by
disparaging the arts domestic, has sent out young girls and women,
indiscriminately, from the sphere domestic, to de-sexing and
demoralising work in factories and businesses; and has engendered the
race of stunted, precocious, bold-eyed, cigarette-smoking, free-living
working-girls who fill our streets; many tricked out like cocottes, eyes
roving after men, impudence upon their tongues, their poor brains
vitiated by vulgar rag-times and cinema-scenes of vice and
suggestiveness.
Some of our working-girls are charming-looking, pretty-mannered, pure
of thought and life, of course. A small minority--alas, how small!--are
normal of development and sound of constitution. But these are not the
average. And it is the average with which a nation has to reckon.
Emphatically, men are not as women. In body and in mind they are by
nature rougher, tougher, and vastly less impressionable. A regime that
_makes_ a boy will wreck a girl. Of more sensitive calibre, she requires
more kindly, protective conditions, moral and industrial, than does he.
Notwithstanding which, little girls now run the streets and take their
chances as they may--in capacities of over-burdened errand-girl,
telegraph-messenger, and otherwise--at ages when their developing
womanhood requires due care of nurture, moral supervision, and freedom
from physical strain. Sedentary occupations are a natural need of their
sex, moreover, as is indicated by the breadth and weight of the female
pelvis and hips, as too by the delicate adjustments of those important
reproductive organs, the future products whereof are of inestimably
higher national values than are the industrial assets of these poor
children's labour. As Girl-guides and so forth, young girls parade our
towns in meretricious (albeit hideous) uniform; developing thereby that
love of publicity and of unwholesome excitement to which the sex is
prone. Small girls just fresh from school are even now employed in
barbers' shops to shave men; destroying thus in them, at the outset of
life, that natural diffidence and reserve toward the other sex which are
the first defences of womanly honour.
In demanding absolute emancipation, industrial and personal, Feminists
had no other thought but that such new liberty would have widened
woman's scope for usefulness, for happiness, for self-development. Yet
what has been the outcome of it all? For one who has used her new
freedom for the ends designed, very many more have used it to their
serious injury; only too many to their moral downfall.
Already everywhere such liberty has fast degenerated into licence. Our
girls were no sooner emancipated by their mothers from the usually
wholesome--if sometimes too severe--control of their fathers, than
straightway they have emancipated themselves from the indispensable
maternal rule. Strict supervision and guidance in a world they are
ignorant of--or if sophisticated are in far worse case--are essential to
the well-being, physical and moral, of the young and immature.
Young girls, on first discovering their attraction for the other sex,
become intoxicated by the sense of their new dangerously-alluring power,
and lose their heads. Beyond all things, they require at this phase a
mother's strict and careful supervision, with sympathy and firm control;
to tide them over their perilous phase, and thus to preserve them from
consequences of their ignorance or folly, or from those of a pernicious
bent. Nevertheless, young girls of every class are granted now
disastrous latitudes of thought and action. The vigilant chaperonage
indispensable to protect them from the biological impulses--which they
mistake for "love"--of the careless or vicious young men to whom
(equally with the chivalrous and honourable) modern mothers abandon
their daughters, has become a dead-letter. The girl only just in her
teens is free to play fast-and-loose with boys and men--as too
with life, before she has learned the merest rudiments of living.
All too soon she learns her lesson. And becoming precociously
sophisticated--only too often precociously vicious--her nature and
future are wrecked at the outset. Because nothing wrecks a woman's
disposition so effectually as sex-precocity does. Sex is the very pivot
of her nature. On this she swings up--or down. And early habit decides
her bent.
That many of these cigarette-smoking, decadent young creatures are no
worse than impudent, feather-brained and misguided, does not save the
licence allowed them from being as harmful to physical as it is perilous
to moral health; nor from the experiences resulting from such licence
wholly unfitting the majority for later wholesome restraint, and for
purer and fairer ideals of womanly conduct and living.
For much of this Feminism is gravely to blame. Not only because it has
led to the absorption of the mothers in outside pursuits, as being of
greater importance than the fulfilment of their maternal duties and
responsibilities to their young daughters, but because, too, the partial
sterilisation of girls, by masculine training and habits, in robbing
them of womanly qualities, robs them of natural reserve and modesty, and
of the other more delicate instincts and aspirations of their sex.
Significant, truly, of latter-day maternal neglect of young daughters
was the disclosure by a doctor, in a recent _British Medical Journal_,
that of a hundred men infected with venereal diseases, more than
_seventy had contracted disease_ from "_amateur flappers_." Yet as with
a child badly burned by playing with fire, we blame the mother or
guardian who exposed it to danger of thus injuring itself for life, so
the mothers of these unfortunate girls were to blame for gross neglect
of their duty to safeguard these young lives.
Nature avenges her betrayed girls, however. For medical authority shows
that these youthful unfortunates transmit disease in its most virulent
and destructive forms. It is as though all the vital potential of their
developing womanhood is perverted to a malign poison, charged with the
forces of their blasted youth.
* * * * *
The Victorian, who brought up her daughters to marry in ignorance of
biological fact, went to the other extreme. But it was a far less
harmful one than that in vogue to-day.
Like that of the child, the immature, susceptible mind of a girl,
incapable of apprehending the sex-factor in its true perspective with
the other factors of life, becomes unduly dominated by consideration
thereof when too early instructed. She is far better left, for so long
as is practicable, ignorant or hazy concerning this vital phenomenon, in
place of being fully informed, as girls are now-a-days. So that they
know all that there is to be known about sex--except its seriousness and
sacredness. And divorced from the seriousness and sacredness of Love and
Birth--which mere knowledge of biological fact is wholly inadequate to
impart--such knowledge of fact presents a crude and bald distortion of
the truth; only too often imparting an ugly and demoralising warp to
mind and conduct. Ignorance is not Innocence, 'tis true, but it serves
the same purpose in safeguarding innocence that clothes do in
safeguarding modesty. And for one girl who falls in consequence of
innocence, twenty fall from sophistication.
Unless masculine traits have been over-developed in her by abnormal
training, in which case (as occurs sometimes in the quasi-masculine
woman of middle-age) sex-instinct may acquire an unnatural and
quasi-masculine insistence, this instinct is, in the normal girl,
_responsive_ rather than _initiative_. (Wherein she differs
diametrically from the male.) And such natural dormancy may be
advantageously preserved by haziness of knowledge, and by the careful
surveillance required for protection of immature minds and powers. The
bald, matter-of-course view-point of many modern girls with regard to
sex, their knowledge of vice, and their cynical acceptance and
discussion thereof, as too of the vulgar intrigues of notorious dancers
and peeresses, to say nothing of the ugly and debasing personal
experiences only too many of them have incurred, are among the evils of
the injurious licence at present accorded to young persons.
Feminism, having thrust such disastrous liberty on creatures as eager to
grasp as they are unfitted to cope with the dangers thereof, is striving
now, by way of women-patrols and police-women, to stem the evil with one
hand--while with the other, it continues to open the flood-gates still
wider. The only way to stem the evil is to stem it at its source. The
home, with the vigilant supervision and guidance of a mother whose duty
is publicly recognised and her authority strengthened thereby, whose
time and faculties are devoted mainly to the making of home and to the
safeguarding and disciplining of the young creatures she has brought
into existence, is environment and shelter as indispensable to the
impressionable youth of both sexes--but more particularly to the
impressionable youth of one--as it is for the rearing of infancy and
childhood. Such home-influences, reinforced by the strong hand of a
father who likewise recognises his parental responsibilities, are the
first of all the rights that matter for young womanhood.
Later, should come a term of domestic service. Mistresses of households
should realise not only their human but likewise their national
responsibility to these young humbler members thereof. No other public
service possible to them would equally conduce to national progress.
As fathers are legally responsible for debts of sons under age, mothers
should be responsible to the State for the virtue of daughters under
sixteen.
In the _personal_, vastly more than in any other field of operation,
woman's chiefest value lies. When she exchanges it for public functions,
and seeks to further progress by officialdom and politics, by
institution of women-patrols, police-women, Mayoresses, and so forth,
the supreme importance of the personal factor becomes impressed by the
discovery of the utter inadequacy of any substitute to take its place.
"If mothers did their duty, there would be no need for us," a
woman-patrol stated recently.
By the time young women have reached such phases of demoralisation that
their conduct in public demands the intervention of police-women, it is
too late to reform them, moreover. They will have lost the best promise
and hope of their womanhood.
And so it is and must be ever all along the line. The home and the
family are the nursery of civic as they are of racial progress. We
regard it as proof of civilisation that Law-Courts for Children have
been instituted. Yet what a blot it is, in truth, upon both parentage
and parenthood that, in our day of enlightenment, such should have
become necessary.
So have mother influences and maternal sense of responsibility declined,
however, that mothers on all sides openly confess their utter lack of
power to control boys and girls just in their 'teens.
VIII
The fashion is to pity and deride the "poor" early Victorian because she
lacked the manifold and nerve-wracking outlets for that restlessness and
boredom from which modern women suffer.
The "poor" Victorian was a more harmonious, better-balanced and more
tranquil being, however. And she was far less cursed with "nerves," with
feverish unrest and carking discontent, than women are to-day.
Mrs. Craigie observed that the Victorian, with her backboard and gentle
accomplishments, produced (without the pusillanimous expedient of
"Twilight Sleep") notably stronger, finer, and more clever children than
do present-day over-educated or athletic women--athletic women, whose
muscles of arms and of legs have so sapped the powers of important
internal muscles that most of them are incapable of bringing their
infants into life without instrumental aid.
One does not, for a moment, counsel reversion to the type or to the
methods of an earlier generation. Evolution and development must
advance, and are, of course, advancing satisfactorily in some stock. But
the Victorian served her generation nobly, producing splendid specimens
of men and women, and handing on a generous racial constitution--now
being squandered recklessly, alas! by her descendants. The tide of
greater freedom, of broader outlook, and fuller effectiveness for woman
has set in, however. Albeit, owing to Feminist misapprehensions, it is
not only moving too rapidly but it is moving in a wrong direction;
because in direct opposition to biological law.
_By their fruits ye shall know them._ And the Victorian so preserved her
woman-powers and attributes that she was an excellent and a contented
wife, and could bring into existence--without instrumental aid--a family
of comely, clever boys and girls; nurse them all from eldest to
youngest; rear and discipline and put such stuff of health and sanity
and enterprise into them as shames some flimsy, feeble-minded,
characterless modern stock. We have far to look to-day, indeed, for
statesmen and soldiers, poets and artists, business and craftsmen, and
other such virile and talented personages as those early and
pre-Victorian mothers endowed their epoch with.
And were further evidence needed that our great-grandmothers equalled
our own women in the qualities we pride ourselves upon as triumphs of
Feminism, the strength and courage, the resource and fortitude those
others showed throughout the stress and horrors of the Indian Mutiny are
proof sufficient that, beneath their gentler virtues, lay the sterner
fibre of nobility.
IX
To prove to what a third-grade power Woman, once so potent an
inspiration of life, has lapsed, we need but go to The Drama--reflex
ever of its period. Consider Shakespeare's women--subtly wise,
profoundly clever, beautiful and gracious, true and charming, strong and
tender, chaste and gay; warm with temperament, crystal-sparkling with
wit and parry!
And comparing these adorable beings with the posturing, tricky,
intriguing, slangy, spotty creatures--neurotic unfaithful wives and
erratic "bachelor"-daughters--of the modern stage, the deplorable
deterioration of our womanly ideals becomes patent.
Women have sinned in every age, but they have sinned in some ages
picturesquely and pathetically, because Nature led them. While the
morbids and neurotics of our modern Plays are for ever noisily turning
out the dusty corners of their warped psychologies, in order to discover
some loose end of Nature in them to condone their erotic eccentricities.
Strange, that Twentieth-Century woman tolerates the mirror held to her
in these abnormal and distasteful creatures!
The modern dramatist is handicapped in his art, it is true, by lack, in
our latter-day actresses, of that personal charm and magnetism, and the
vital power to render the higher and subtler emotions and passions,
whereby the actresses of earlier days held audiences spell-bound.
Politics and Sports destroy alike the Muses and the Graces. One who
attempts to combine them with the delicate psychological arts and
artistries of The Drama is bound to failure--in her art, at all events.
Time was when the best men reverenced women as beings of more delicate
calibre, to be shielded from the rougher and grosser contacts of life.
Chivalry forbade that they should have taken these to coarse
exhibitions, prize-fights and the like. And to such restriction woman's
purer instinct and her finer taste assented.
The male being practical and rational, however, since women themselves
are changing all that, he too is coming to believe that any and every
thing is good enough for a sex which more and more repudiates its
subtler quality.
That native delicacy which preserved her once from masculine habits of
thought and indulgence, taught man to realise woman as belonging, by
nature, to a purer and daintier order. (Howsoever inferior to himself in
some other respects he may have held her.)
It won his reverence and worship that these frailer and more
exquisitely-constituted creatures should possess, despite their
exquisiteness, such fine mettle of resistance in their softness as
withstood the fire and urgence of the masculine siege; that within their
(possibly) ignorant little brains was light that flashed straight to
intrinsic truths and right courses of action; such intuitive
apprehension of The Good and The Beautiful, without experience of the
base and ugly, as taught them to distinguish clearly, to select, and to
hold fast to the fairer in thought and in conduct.
To encounter in woman his own traits touched to higher, subtler issues,
and transformed to novel and alluring quality by the charm and graces of
another sex, has made always an enchanting, an inspiring, and a baffling
enigma of her--to endue woman for man with eternal values and
impenetrable mystery. For he has visioned in her--without
formulating--the mystery of the Human Duality.
Trembling in the delicate poise of her twofold being, between the soft
impressionable, variable woman in her and the man of steel æsthetically
sheathed within the velvet of her womanhood, the play of her swift
supple transitions, the kaleidoscopic changes of her perpetual new
combinations--giving ever fresh bewildering effects of colour, light and
mode--have made her infinite variety for him. While her soft, immediate
adjustments to his own moods and needs have been his wonder and delight;
presenting to him all that there is in himself, yet in modes impossible
to himself. All that he knows by acquaintance she knows by
intuition--and in a fresh and fairer way. All that he sees, her eyes
make him see again in new and more exquisite lights. All that he thinks
had been already in her woman-heart ere ever man began to think. All
that he loves she shows him a reason for loving--yet not by way of
reason. All that he craves with his soul, her soul can confer. All that
his body and sense have desired, her body and sense can bestow--But with
all the immeasurable differences and enhancements of her unlike sex.
"_Away, away!_" cried Jean Paul Richter, apostrophising Music, "_thou
speakest to me of things that in all my endless life I have not found,
and shall not find!_"
Wagner said, "Music is a Woman."
Dr. Havelock Ellis, himself a zealous Feminist, has said, that, in their
ardour for emancipation, women sometimes seem anxious to be emancipated
from their sex. While Ellen Key, most impartial of critics, observes:
"But full of insight as they are into the _ars amandi_, have modern
women, indeed, learned how with all their soul, all their strength, and
all their mind to love? Their mothers and grandmothers--on a much lower
plane of woman's erotic idealism--knew of only one object; that of
making their husbands happy.... But what watchful tenderness, what
dignified desire to please, what fair gladness could not the finest of
these spiritually-ignored women develop! The new man lives in a dream of
the new woman, and she in a dream of the new man. But when they actually
find one another, it frequently results that two highly-developed
brains together analyse love; or that two worn-out nervous systems fight
out a disintegrating battle over love.... Of love's double
heart-beat--the finding one's self, and the forgetting one's self in
another--the first is now considerably more advanced than the second."
The reason why the New man and the New woman, having found one another,
find no more inspiration or sweetness each in the other than to "fight
out a disintegrating battle" is because both are male of brain and
bent--one normally so, the other abnormally.
And when two males meet, their nature is--to fight!
* * * * *
Into every clause of this book must be read the many inspiring
exceptions to be found among those modern men and women and children who
are advancing normally along evolutionary lines. Such are so fine of
type, in body and in mind, that they blind not a few to facts of racial
deterioration. We point to these and say: One cannot speak with truth of
the degeneracy of nations which produce such noble specimens!
These exceptions prove the principle I am endeavouring to impress,
however. That were we to apply ourselves to correction of our biological
and social errors, we have with us stock of the noblest Race
conceivable, and the noblest possible future for that Race.
CHAPTER VIII
DANGEROUS SEPARATION OF WOMEN INTO TWO ORDERS: FEMINISTS AND FEMININISTS
"_Every child comes with the message that God is not yet
discouraged of Man._"
I
Since women possess native gifts of highly-differentiated faculties and
aptitudes, not only their greatest effectiveness, but, too, their
well-being and happiness lie in finding highly-specialised and selective
application for these, in Life, in Art, in Science, and in Industry.
Their rôle in every field of operation should be recognised as being
wholly different from that of man, however; and their own natural
view-points and special abilities should be fostered, accordingly, by
suitable training; in order to fit them for the special departments for
which they are essentially suited.
The charming artistry and fancies, spontaneous and full of delicate
insight, feeling, and sense of line, which a woman puts into her
illustrations of a child's Fairy-story, are art as true, for example,
and if less great of achievement, are nevertheless as intrinsically
valuable in The Scheme of Things as are the virile masterpieces of a
Michael Angelo or Turner.
Few men attain the exquisite artistry in colour that even indifferent
women-painters show. It is an expression, in mentality, of the
biological fact that the colour-sense is naturally so highly developed
in woman that Colour-blindness--comparatively common among men--is rare
indeed in her.
On the other hand, woman is inherently weak in drawing. When she is
trained, however, to draw with masculine strength and precision, she
loses her natural freedom and delicacy of touch, her sensitive feeling
for line, her exquisite colour-sense, her fertile fancy. Rosa Bonheur's
horses are as strong in drawing as they are baldly deficient in
sentiment. Men have painted horses bolder still in line, but
nevertheless noble and beautiful in feeling.
The same is true of Literature. Mrs. Browning would have been a great
poet had she not taken her husband for model. Some of her delicate
woman-fancies, tricked out in Robert Browning's over-virile style, are
like charming women masquerading in fustian trousers.
George Eliot, too, affected the masculine both in viewpoint and
method--a bad habit which so grew upon her that her later novels are
ponderous as political treatises, and devoid of human interest.
Far different, Charlotte Brontë. True to herself and to her sex, she
wrote and has written for all time--as those others did not--as a woman,
and as only a woman could have written. Jane Austen, likewise.
The woman point-of-view and method are regarded, for the most part,
however, as mark of the amateur--the model aimed at being the eternal
masculine in mode and trend.
If the demand, "_We take all labour for our province!_" be safeguarded
by recognising and differentiating the province into two distinct and
separate--supplementary and complementary--departments, for the
respective labours of the two widely differing sexes, the claim comes
first within the range of reason and discretion.
As woman was the first doctor, so she was the first artist. Man inherits
from her not only his artistic faculty, but he derives from her his
faculty of creative inspiration. Applying his native intelligence, his
executive ability and power of sustained effort, to this end, he has so
developed The Arts as to have carried these to their modern
realisations. And though woman, in her turn, may learn of him, it by no
means follows that his standards or technique are best adapted to her
modes of inspiration, to her ideals or attainments.
Trained along the lines of natural inherences, and trained, accordingly,
without injury or warp to health or faculty by straining after standards
not their own, women would not be disqualified, as so many are now by
avocational specialisation, for wife and motherhood. They would, on the
contrary, be the better adapted. And health and charm and emotion not
having been sacrificed in them by de-sexing pursuits, such would be
eagerly sought. Thus Racial advance would be secured by its wives and
mothers having been drawn from the best orders of women; the women
naturally endowed with faculty and character; self-reliant, but
unspoiled by abnormal training.
A number of latter-day women being unfitted, alike by nature and by
inclination, for marriage, two orders of the sex should be clearly
distinguished and administered for; as being wholly different types, for
whom wholly different creeds and employments are indicated.
Those whose aims and talents incline them to public careers should be
content with the lot to which they are best suited; and content to
accept the privileges thereof, and the disabilities thereof. They should
not be greedy, and demand, at the same time, the liberty of the
free-lance and the privileges of the wife and the mother.
So with the wife and mother. She, for her part, must forgo the liberty
of the free-lance. Because, with her privileges, she has undertaken
functions and duties which, for their complete fulfilment, demand her
best powers and activities.
Men who marry are similarly restricted. The bachelor lacks the interests
and happiness of the husband and father. The husband and father lacks
the personal liberty and the freedom from responsibility enjoyed by the
bachelor.
It is women, mainly, who demand both the prerogatives of the married and
of the unmarried states. Notwithstanding that it is wholly impossible
for them to fulfil the functions of both, because it is impossible for
them to possess either the aptitudes or the energies for both.
In view of all that men have attained by devotion of their lives to the
civilised achievements which now dignify existence and ennoble faculty,
when one sees women more clamorously confident in their bounden right to
inherit lightly all that the other sex has so laboriously won than they
are reverently grateful for the inestimable human privileges and the
treasuries of Art and Mind-wealth available to them by way of these
surrendered masculine lives, it seems cause for indignation equal to
that aroused by the phlegmatic calm wherewith most men accept as
matter-of-course--instead of as matter for reverent gratitude--the gifts
of Life and Faculty, to evolve and to transmit which to them, their
mothers and all the generations of mothers before them surrendered their
lives and their powers.
Recognition of the intrinsic differences, in trend and in function,
between the sexes, should go far to dispel misconceptions and points of
variance between them. The prevailing notion that the one sex is a sort
of muddled version of the other--and not a highly-specialised
presentment of an invaluable order of qualities, with inevitable
shortcomings in the complementary order of qualities--is greatly to
blame for sex-misapprehensions and antagonisms.
II
Feminists anticipate that War-experiences will further and finally
eliminate all economic sex-distinctions, by having supplied convincing
object-lessons that their sex is able to do, and to do efficiently, all
that the other sex can do.
Far from object-lessons in the suitabilities, however, the experience
has furnished terrible examples pointing the contrary way. Because
although women have shown themselves both willing and efficient in these
new capacities, results have proved at what cost to themselves and to
life they have done men's work. Apart from a deplorable deterioration in
morale, showing both in coarseness and in viciousness, the blight of age
which has swooped upon both young and old, as direct consequence of the
hardship and strain of masculine employments, robbing them of youth and
health and joy and beauty, of repose and higher appeal, and transforming
them into the grim, drab, harassed spectres many have become, should be
warning enough, in all conscience, of whither Feminism is leading us.
Many of our young women have become so de-sexed and masculinised,
indeed, and the neuter state so patent in them, that the individual is
described (unkindly) no longer as "She" but as "It."
Dire have been the disillusionment and bitterness among our fighting
men, upon returning to the homes and wives or loves they had long
dreamed of--to find the wife or love a shattered wreck, or a strenuous,
graceless, half-male creature; the home a place of nerve-racking unrest.
It is consoling to know that a number of those who have been de-sexed
merely, and not disabled, will continue to find useful and contented
outlet for their masculine developments in filling still the places of
our fallen heroes. Cruelty lies in the fact, however, that the womanhood
of many will have been wrecked quite needlessly; by strain of
superfluously strenuous drill and marchings, scoutings, signallings, and
other such vain and fruitless imitations of the male.
The greatest care should have been exercised to have selected the
strong and able-bodied, the older women and the women of the
characteristic worker-type (corresponding to the sterile female-worker
of the bee-hive), for the rougher and the more exhausting tasks. The
young wives and mothers and the young girls should have been rigorously
excluded from such.
Of all human prerogatives, the greatest is that of being preserved, by
class, by ability, by means, or by privilege, from gravitating to levels
of work that coarsen and debase; or that, at all events, do not exercise
and foster the development of higher tastes and faculty. And this human
privilege is, in proportion to their degrees of civilisation, accorded
to women by all civilised peoples. As men have stood between them and
the perils of battle and shipwreck, the slaying of wild beasts,
pioneering, exploring, and the like, so they have stood between them and
the coarsest, ugliest, and most debasing industrial functions.
Nevertheless, Feminist anger at restriction whatsoever in the matter of
employment ignores all cause for gratitude on the part of the sex, that,
being at man's mercy as she is, civilised woman is no longer (as the
woman of inferior civilisations is still) a beast of heavy burden. Far
otherwise, indeed, Feminism aims at nothing so much as to repudiate her
established privileges, abolish all distinctions, and to make woman once
again that beast of burden the chivalry of man--at first instinctive,
later magnanimous--has progressively rescued her from being.
And yet the degree to which sex is defined in Labour (as in Life) is at
the same time the gauge and the cause of human development. Wheresoever
are found low intelligence, crude morale and lack of progress, there the
women are employed in men's work. Wheresoever women are employed in
men's work, there are low intelligence, crude morale and lack of
progress.
"Thank Heaven for the War!" Feminists have said, however, "because it
has enabled our sex to prove its worth--by enabling us to quit ourselves
like men. The world knows now that women can conduct omnibuses, drive
ploughs, clean stables, kill chickens, ring and slaughter pigs, quite as
well as men can."
It is as painful as it is amazing to find intelligent and cultured
persons so blinded by the obsessions of their creed as to suppose that
in ploughing and hoeing and making munitions, women are doing finer and
more valuable work than they had been doing previously; that the woman
bus-conductor is a more important person than the children's nurse; that
to drive a cab or clean a boiler is a nobler occupation than the
teaching of music or the cleansing of clothes; that to spread manure is
more dignifying than to make beds; to amputate the limbs of wounded
soldiers is superior to the subtler, far more difficult art of medically
treating the complex ills of women and children.
That these other employments have been demanded by the times, is
undeniable; as, too, that honour and credit are due to those who well
and capably responded to the exigencies of the hour. But this does not,
in the least degree, lessen the illogic of the claim that such response
to the cruder and less-civilised demands of War proved woman's value
more than did the devotion and efficiency she was previously showing in
the far more complex and progressive arts of Peace. The main value of
her War-work was that it fitted the times. But the times have been
woefully out of joint!
III
At a recent Feminist Meeting, one of the leaders of Militancy detailed
to an audience of fierce-eyed, sombre-visaged members of her own sex,
and sundry meek-browed persons of the other, her latest exploits in the
matters of arranging Labour disputes and averting strikes of
working-men; of sending Governmental male officials to the right-about,
and of disposing, in general, of masculine concerns.
The main issue of her story was lost sight of, alike by herself and by
her audience. This was--or so it seemed to one among the latter: What
manner of men were these who required or tolerated it that a woman
should take them thus in hand, and, as though they had been whipped
children, dispose of them and their men's affairs--between worker and
employer, between man and man? What order of creature will be the sons
and the grandsons of men ever further emasculated by every further
generation of subjection by such masterful persons; female-Dominants who
arrogate the virile rights and prerogatives of their menkind; their
initiative and enterprise; their capacity to think, to speak, to plan
and to act for themselves?
The Subjection of woman by man--What was that evil compared with this
other enormity: the Subjection of man by woman, which is fast replacing
it?
Men who--saving under stress of War--permit women to usurp the functions
and prerogatives of their natural domain, in capacities of Mayor, of
Chairman of Companies and so forth, are, frankly speaking--Muffs!
Not of such sires were our great Anglo-Saxon Races gotten. Not such was
it who have made England what she is! And the England we look to will
never be the England we look to--until such effeminate blood shall have
been bred out of her sons.
The male becomes emasculate when women invade his domain. And with the
increasing Hugger-mugger of the sexes, it grows, every day, more and
more difficult for men to escape into the bracing, invigorating
environment and moral of their own sex--a moral untempered by amenities
due to the other, and one indispensable to string them to the pitch of
virile thought and action. Our sailors and soldiers and aviators are
still _men_, because woman has not so far invaded the Navy, the Army, or
the Air.
Feminine invasion everywhere else--in schools and colleges, in the arts,
in politics, in commerce and in sports--is undoubtedly enfeebling the
fibre of our manhood and the quality of masculine achievements. Man is a
pioneer; aggressive, progressive, ever breaking new ground; conquering
new territory and new forces of Nature. And this alike in politics, in
commerce, and in other material affairs. When he fails to pioneer,
reaching out to new horizons of thought and activity, engineering new
enterprises, while at the same time strengthening and consolidating all
he had already acquired--then the world, in place of progressing,
regresses. And for pioneering, whether in political or in geographical
regions, woman's presence hampers him.
The less men are in a position to escape from the other sex, the more
they lose the impetus and characteristics of their own.
The like applies to women. Women who mix too much and too freely with
men deteriorate signally in womanly values and quality.
Both sexes benefit by segregation from the other, in order to
adapt--each to its own characteristic morale and moral. Neither sex is
wholly unconstrained and candid when in company of the other--unless
both are demoralised.
Sex operates as a stimulant. And to be always under influence of a
stimulant is enervating. On the other hand, when, from over-indulgence,
Sex or any other stimulant ceases to release new inspiration and forces,
it is sign of a permanently enervated state. Or sex operates as a
hypnotic. And to be always under hypnotic influence is as destructive of
individuality as it is fatal to achievement.
The sexes require to separate, accordingly, in order to derive fresh
impulse on coming together again.
Both work more seriously and sincerely, more efficiently and more
effectively, apart; taking counsel, when need be, one of the other.
The dilettante spirit and amenities of mixed companies, destructive of
"thoroughness," are greatly to blame for that decline of British
commerce which has followed on the Feminist invasion of business-houses.
Significant of the trend is the fact that young and pretty and
inefficient girls are selected for business positions, as clerks and so
forth, while older women of experience and accredited ability are
rejected summarily. It is, doubtless, amusing and flattering to
masculine employers to be surrounded by attractive youth of the opposite
sex. But it is conducive neither to commercial enterprise nor to
achievement.
IV
Because of the intrinsic variability underlying her duality of
constitution, the happy mean and balance (difficult to all humans) are
especially difficult to woman.
Man, like herself, is of dual constitution. But he is more firmly,
because less finely, poised between his two orders of Traits. She, on
the contrary, tends to oscillate between the opposite extremes of her
two-sided nature. A bent which may be traced, throughout history, in the
excesses, in one or the other direction, that have characterised the
careers of many famous women-personages.
The Ultra-Feminine extreme, which results from lack of due balance of
her woman-side by the masculine side of her, and the Mannish extreme,
occasioned by over-development of her masculine inherences, may be
regarded as, respectively, the Scylla and Charybdis--the rocks of the
Male-traits, or the vortex of the Female-traits--whereon, equally, may
be wrecked the noblest characteristics and the highest values of the
sex, when it fails to steer clear, _in medias res_, of either.
In a number of women, the Feminist and the Femininist (Ultra-Feminine)
types alternate in the same person. In place of being stably and
permanently centred in the woman-side of them, with the masculine to
steady and intelligise, such persons act and re-act, in more or less
violent pendulum-swing, between their two orders of impulse. Thus we get
women, intellectual, progressive, strenuous, engrossed for part of their
time in serious, perhaps in public avocations--and then plunging, in
violent recoil, into social frivolities; vanities, dissipations, pranks,
intrigues, excesses.
Men, too, act between extremes. In far less degree, however. Life
demands from most of them over-accentuation and concentration of their
male-abilities, in physical and mental specialisations. And in reaction,
they plunge into follies and vices. But the more virile keep their
heads, and preserve a certain stability and conformity in their
aberrations. While effeminate men, it is mainly who lapse into vicious
excess.
Since woman supplies the inspiration and the morale of life, however,
and since her momentous function of motherhood empowers her to make or
to mar the Race whereof she is creatrix, a nation has a greater claim
upon its women, and has, at the same time, more reason and more right to
restrict their liberty of action, and to direct their bent, than it has
in the case of its men. Its survival and its downfall tremble in the
scales of Life which woman holds. To compensate her for such restriction
and limitation of her scope, obviously it owes her privileges, personal
and economic. And a subconscious recognition of this fact has been,
doubtless, the source of such privileges as she now enjoys.
There have always been, as history shows, women in whom, from faulty
heredity or culture, or from stress of circumstance, the Male-traits
have been abnormally developed; virile-brained, stout-hearted, muscular
chieftainesses, chatelaines, abbesses, matrons; or (in less agreeable
guise) amazons, shrews and viragoes. But always such were recognised as
being abnormal, and for the most part as being repellant. It was not
sought to manufacture them. It is only of late years that Mannishness
has become a serious Cult.
And now a dangerous thing has happened. Because where formerly symptoms
of Feminism attacked individuals only--and these mainly the mature and
eccentric--now the young and the normal are being indoctrinated
wholesale. Young girls taken during the malleable phases of growth and
development, and forcibly shaped to masculine modes, become more or less
irretrievably male of trait and bent; losing all power to recover the
womanly normal.
While on the other hand, there are assembling to-day, in an opposite
ever-increasing and menacing camp, those others for whom Feminism, with
its extremist, exacting, self-reliant codes and modes, has no appeal;
the pretty mindless, the idle frivolous, the pleasure-seeker, the
freakish and the conscienceless--in a word, the Ultra-Feminines; in whom
the woman-failings are unfortunately more conspicuous than are the
woman-virtues. Between these two extremes stand (and stand so far in
gratifying number) the natural, admirably-balanced, noble and invaluable
Moderates--normal women content to be normal women, and to fulfil the
destined rôle of such. And these are the saving grace of nations.
Apart from these, the sex is ever further and more dangerously
separating into the two extremist camps; the Mannish and strenuous, and
the Over-Feminised and purposeless, more or less idle and frivolous,
selfishly absorbed in clothes, in luxury and pleasures; exacting
masculine tribute in mind and kind, with but little return in affection
or ministry.
In place, accordingly, of that fine normal poise of the Contrasting Man
and Woman-Traits--which is the way of Evolution and of Progress--there
is being substituted in the sex this degenerative segregation of its
Traits in two wholly opposite, and equally lopsided types. And of these,
the purposeful and strenuous, all the while making for masculine
standards, are all the while further discarding the beauty, the
emotions, the delicacy and morale of true woman; while the mindless and
vain, the attractive and charming, are more and more divorcing
themselves from purpose, from seriousness, from noble endeavour and
usefulness.
And since rights accorded to women are shared by all, every new
privilege Feminists win for the sex in the sweat of their assiduous
brows--liberty, latchkeys and general latitude--the Ultra-Feminines
snatch, and apply to frivolous and profitless, or to demoralising ends;
licence, extravagances, vices.
The Ultra-Feminine, for the most part shallow and mindless (although
many clever women belong to this order), absorbed in complacent culture
of her oftentimes alluring personality, enhancing it, attiring it,
developing its charm and graces, eager of homage and of tribute, is
example of that Parasitism Miss Schreiner condemns in the sex; example
of qualities normally making for beauty, but from loss of balance, owing
to warp, hereditary or of misdirection, morbidly feeding upon
themselves.
This Parasitism is seen in its worst guise in the vast armies of
prostitutes, who in every clime and epoch ravage the fair fruits of
human life and achievement.
Against this Parasitism in herself, self-absorbing, self-indulgent,
enervating--defect of her reposefulness, of her æstheticism and vital
self-consciousness--every woman needs to be upon her guard; to repress
with firmness the smooth easy lapse it prompts toward sloth and
pleasure; to exorcise the soft dry-rot of it, by power of aspiration and
by prayer of ministry. (For noble truth it is that _Laborare est
orare_.)
The Woman's Movement did good service for the sex in the early chapters
of its history, when it made for due education of woman's higher
masculine inherences; intelligence, application, self-reliance; as also
in finding further fields of usefulness and self-expression for her.
But unfortunately in the later chapters, over-cultivation of these
traits has increasingly annulled and extinguished her own. And this with
the unforeseen, disquieting resultant that a compensatory movement has
set in apace among that other faction of the sex. So that the more
mannish the Feminists become in mode and aim, the more womanish become
the Effeminates. Thus, albeit sincerely despising and decrying this,
Feminism has nevertheless indirectly fostered the growth of Effeminacy.
While, by supplying it with ever further liberty and scope for the
indulgence of its freaks and failings, Feminist propaganda has directly
played into its hands. Motherhood strikes deeper roots of attribute even
in the Ultra-Feminine; brings thin streams of altruism to her
neurasthenic breasts. In her children she forgets clothes, grows less
greedy of masculine tribute, forgoes pleasures and excitements that had
been the breath of life to her.
The increasing emancipation of the sex from home-functions and from
womanly and mother-duties, however--claimed and obtained with a view to
further economic scope and application of its powers--has been
exultantly hailed and exploited by the Ultra-Feminines for ever further
indulgence of and wider range of action for their dangerous defects. And
Feminism will find--and this soon to its dismay--that the battle it has
waged against the other sex has been as nothing to the battle it has yet
to wage against its own, in the person of the Eternal Effeminate; idle,
luxurious, parasitic and effete, who, with her brood, engenders the
dry-rot which crumbles mighty civilisations, or topples them in
Revolution.
V
Of the two camps, the vast majority of masculines will always seek their
loves and wives among the Ultra-Feminines; frail and erratic, but
attractive and more or less womanly. So long as men are men, the
feminine graces, even in their spurious forms of Effeminacy, will
possess more vital appeal for them than do the intelligences and
utilities.
The Feminist camp, further and further commandeering the intelligent and
self-reliant, the worthy and purposeful of the sex, while more and more
discarding the charms and the softness thereof, will be further and
further deserted by men. And of the happy mean--the well-balanced woman,
at once tender and intelligent, devoted and charming--there will be ever
fewer available.
What then is the future, biological and sociological, of Races whose
wives and mothers will have been drawn mainly from the shallow-brained
and shallow-hearted, from the less dutiful, the less high and
right-minded? To say nothing of the less constitutionally-sound, the
Ultra-Feminine being, for the most part, a neurotic? The great majority
of such will decline part, indeed, in functions so dull and distasteful
as the mothering and rearing of children.
The Feminist wife, with her intelligent grip of economics and her stern
sense of citizen-duty, would fulfil her racial function (in accordance
with Malthusius) during intervals of more absorbing and strenuous
activities. But when once the novelty--which gives a certain piquancy
for some men to a mannishness some women are able to wear quite prettily
and attractively in early youth--shall have worn away, the poor
Feminist's chances of marriage will be few, indeed; save with
men-weaklings, requiring the virile support of a strong-minded,
muscular wife.
The Feminist makes a far more honest and reliable, sincere and helpful,
mate than does the Ultra-Feminine. But men prefer the latter.
Male characteristics are to be found among their male acquaintance. And
it is not a normal, nor is it a wholesome instinct in a man, to seek in
sex the traits of his own.
In the cult of Mannishness, woman loses her strongest, her noblest and
tenderest appeal for true men--the appeal of her womanhood. And losing
it, she abandons the male to the toils of the enemy camp; to those whose
womanishness partakes, at all events, of the attributes of a sex
complementary and supplementary to his own.
* * * * *
Unhappy wights! How Nature has handicapped them--in order to spur them
to their virile part of founding and providing for the family!
VI
As innocent of misappropriating that which is Cæsar's as they are
ignorant of the biological verities, some Women-leaders and Prime-movers
in Feminism exact and exult in the warm young, zealous adulation and
hero-worship of their followers; never suspecting that such tribute is
rendered, in fact, to the _male_ in them. Both they and their votaries
believe themselves loyal and thrall to their finger-tips to Woman and
The Woman-Cause. Whereas they are, in reality, hero-worshipping, on the
one hand, the Male in their Cult, and on the other, the Masculine traits
of its female exponents. Against man himself and the Maleness that is
his by natural right, many are filled with hottest distrust and
aversion. Yet while sex-antagonism is thus strong in them in fealty to
their creed, Nature is strong in them too. And with gentle irony she
exacts their homage for the traits of the foe--masquerading in guise of
a female!
Heroes to worship, every naturally-constituted woman craves. And it is
the hero--far less than it is the heroine--in the Feminist leaders,
their qualities of fight and masterfulness, of virile brain and concrete
enterprise, which evoke their adherents' devotion and tribute.
Some Feminist leaders bid, indeed, as strenuously for and claim as
jealously the undivided loyalty and subjection of their flock as ever
Tyrant-Man demanded of the sex.
In schools and colleges too, the girls make gods and heroes of those of
their sex who excel in manly sports. They have never a suspicion that
their gods and heroes are not goddesses and heroines. Similars being
unattractive to one another, the exposition of woman-traits leaves woman
more or less unmoved. As Nature destined, the woman-heart goes out to
those virtues and valours which are the natural complement of her own.
This latter-day vogue is not a normal, nor a pretty development. But it
is another of the inevitable consequences of disturbing Nature's
balances. Nature's plan and her methods of administration are so perfect
that when left to herself she preserves her equilibrium and secures her
aims by the safest and, at the same time, by the simplest expedients.
When man destroys the hawks which, normally, reduce the smaller fry of
birds to their allotted quotum in the Scheme of Things, however, the
smaller fry multiply inordinately and devour his cherries and his corn.
And when he destroys the smaller fry, the slugs and grubs and _aphides_
multiply and devour his lettuces and roses.
So it is with Human traits and faculties. The balance of The Normal is
the way alone of health and happiness and progress.
There is great boast now-a-days of friendship and comradeship between
the sexes. Yet though friendship and comradeship are good allies of
love, they are but sterile, uninspiring substitutes for the profounder,
higher, vital and undying emotions of the true love-passion.
On the other hand, attachments between men and men, and between women
and women, are strengthening and intensifying; absorbing the emotion and
devotion formerly and normally bestowed on members of the opposite sex.
While attraction between persons of opposite sex becomes ever lighter
and triter in sentiment; serving more and more for brief distraction and
provocative pastime rather than for a living and abiding bond.
This misplaced affection for members of the same sex arises from the
attraction of traits of the opposite sex unduly developed in them. While
indifference to members of the opposite sex results from lack in these
of the characteristics of their sex, normally accentuated. Thus a woman
is more drawn to one of her own sex possessing virile characteristics,
physical or mental, than she is drawn to a weak-brained, emasculate man.
Masculine women are attracted likewise by the womanly graces and quality
of feminine women.
While men find in some members of their own sex, feminine traits of
sympathy and sentiment absent in women of male-proclivity. All is an
expression of the law of the Attraction of Opposites, which (normally)
causes persons of opposite sex to be strongly drawn to one another.
On the other hand, the development in himself, or in herself, of the
characteristics of the opposite sex makes members of either sex
independent of and indifferent to members of the other, by supplying
them with a spurious counterfeit of qualities it is natural to seek in
those others.
VII
Professor Drummond, from whom I quote frequently, as being one of those
biologists on the side of the angels, writes thus beautifully:
"Sex is a paradox; it is that which separates in order to unite....
There is no instance in Nature of Division of Labour being brought
to such extreme specialisation. The two sexes were not only set
apart to perform different halves of the same function, but each so
entirely lost the power of performing the whole function that even
with so great a thing at stake as the continuance of the species
_one_ could not discharge it.
"It is important to notice this absence of necessity for Sex having
been created--the absence of any known necessity, from the merely
physiological standpoint.
"Is it inconceivable that Nature should sometimes do things with an
ulterior object, an ethical one, for instance? To no one with any
acquaintance with Nature's ways, will it be possible to conceive of
such a purpose as the sole purpose.
"Had Sex done nothing more than make an interesting world, the debt
of Evolution to Reproduction had been incalculable.... What exactly
Maleness is, and what Femaleness, has been one of the problems of
the world. At least five hundred theories of their origin are
already in the field, but the solution seems to have baffled every
approach. Sex has remained almost to the present hour an ultimate
mystery of creation....
"The contribution of each to the evolution of the human race is
special and unique. To the man has been mainly assigned the
fulfilment of the first great function--the Struggle for Life.
Woman, whose higher contribution has not yet been named, is the
chosen instrument for carrying on the Struggle for the Life of
Others.
"That task, translated into one great word is Maternity--which is
nothing but the Struggle for the Life of Others transfigured,
transferred to the moral sphere. Focused in a single human being,
this function, as we rise in history, slowly begins to be
accompanied by those heaven-born psychical states which transform
the femaleness of the older order into the Motherhood of the New."
Out of the misconception of Sex as having no other purpose or
significance than that of reproduction merely, there has arisen the
further misconception that, lacking other purpose or significance, the
sex-characteristics of Woman may be obliterated in her not only without
injury, but with benefit to her; as being superfluous and hampering
impedimenta merely, when reproductive issues are beside the question.
Yet since Faculty lapses first in its latest and highest developments,
sex-deterioration manifests most in the higher mental and moral
Sex-characteristics. One result, therefore, of not fostering, by culture
and by avocation, sex-specialisations upon planes of mind and aptitude,
is that, while lapsing in its higher functions, Sex remains operative
still upon the physical plane, and functions crudely--perhaps viciously
thereon. Just as intelligence becomes dense and degraded when its finer
qualities are not exercised, and their development thus raised to finer
issues. Moreover, by denying to Sex and to the rites of love any but
parental issues, the individual, emotional and spiritual issues of the
human union are ignored; a limitation all the more dishonouring, because
of the present-day misconception of parenthood as being a purely
"physical," and, accordingly, an inferior function.
There is not, of course, in all the complex marvel of human metabolism,
such an anomaly as a purely physical function. Digestion even is far,
indeed, from being such, since by way of this a slice of bread is
transformed into living personality, living thought and impulse, living
action.
Sex is manifestly a Spiritual and an Eternal Principle. Because, by way
of its essential dual differentiations and intensifying operations,
Matter becomes endued not only with Life and Faculty, but, having become
Living Matter, it becomes endued, by power of reproduction, with the
potential of eternal Life and Faculty. Even more, it becomes endued with
the potential of the eternal unfoldment of ever-further intensifying
Life and Faculty.
Sex is, in truth, for both genders, such a convergence of every
characteristic--physical, mental and emotional--in a highly specialised
focus, that the whole outlook upon life becomes highly specialised and
intensified thereby; every impression and experience becoming instinct
and charged with intrinsic meanings, vividness and colour. And this
apart wholly from relation to the other sex. Although, of course, the
focus and intensity of the traits of the one sex are _accentuated_ in
vividness and richness, in response to the complementary traits of the
other.
It is Sex that energises men to be great; great leaders of men, great
writers, great statesmen, great soldiers, great sailors,
explorers--great sinners and great saints.
Sex it is makes women great also; great mates for great men, great
mothers, writers, ministers to poor Humanity--great saints.
The mystery of Sex is, surely, Master-key to all the other mysteries of
the Cosmos.
* * * * *
VIII
In aiming at Hermaphrodism, Feminism is contriving not only at
frustration of all that Evolution has achieved in Life and Faculty, but
it is making for the extinction of Life itself.
The Hermaphrodite is incapable of parenthood. And in the degree to which
members of either sex lapse toward Neuterdom, in body or in mind, they
become incapable of transmitting to offspring all those higher
developments of form and faculty which are, essentially,
Sex-differentiations. The present-day decline in parental impulse and
affection, which shows, among other signs, in ever-decreasing
Birth-rates, is a symptom of temperamental Neuterdom; evidence alike of
Sex-decline, and, in this, of decline of that vital energy and spiritual
impulse whereof Sex is the manifestation.
Such trend toward Race-suicide denotes, in the Race, that same
neurasthenia and pusillanimity, which, in the individual, impel him to
personal suicide.
Latter-day marriage, greedily grasping all that Life and Love bestow
while grudging any due to Life and Love, is not true Marriage--but is
sacrilege.
Between this and the mating of true men and women, who, in gratitude for
Love, pay tribute joyfully to Life in lives to follow after them, is all
the vital difference, in impulse and emotion, between the Ship of
Love--with its mysterious freight--immured within a narrow lock whereof
the gate to the Beyond is sealed, and the Ship of Love launched free
upon the open sea of Human Destiny--a Shining sea of Faith and Hope,
which tides beyond the narrow mortal gateway toward a Great Unknown;
Remote, Illimitable, Veiled in Everlasting Silence.
_This_ ship fares forth upon its voyage of Mystery, beatified by full
surrender of all lesser issues to that sacred one of the Eternal
Human--a surrender which endues true marriage with tenderness and awe
and beauty.
* * * * *
_Do we not pitch our songs too low, O sweet--my Singers?_
CHAPTER IX
THE IMPENDING SUBJECTION OF MAN
"The Earth never tires.... Nature is rude and incomprehensible at
first;
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well
envelop'd;
I swear to you there are Divine Things more beautiful than words
can tell."
_Walt Whitman._
I
In the long and painful history of man's more or less total failure to
value and to honour woman for her greatest, her most vital and
self-sacrificing part in human affairs, none has approached in obliquity
his recent deplorable blunder of awarding her the suffrage and the right
to sit in Parliament, as recognition of her War-services.
All the long ages of Mother-surrender, of quiet heroism and attainment,
all the best, beautiful years of women's lives which the burden and
sickness, the weariness, danger and anguish have devoured down the
centuries, while the mothers were giving themselves to be the nation's
bone and blood and brain, to nourish, cherish, and upbring it--All were
passed over without word or sign.
Not for her long ages of devoted duty to the nation's sick and helpless,
for rearing and safeguarding its priceless infant and child-life, for
administering its homes--fashioning, cleansing, beautifying, contriving,
making the utmost of its means and ends--Not for her inestimable
services as man's good comrade and wise counseller, his love and friend
and faithful help, in sorrow, evil and adversity; not even for her
age-long, arduous labours and achievements in Religion, Charity, Reform.
For none of these, her great intrinsic and eternal ministries to Life
and to Humanity, has man now set her by him in the Van of Things.
But for filling shells and felling trees, for turning lathes and driving
motors, ploughing fields and lighting street-lamps--all valuable duties,
it is true, in the crisis we have passed through, and indispensable to
carrying on the nation's business. Yet what a drop from the supreme and
tender to the trite and banal, from the vital and essential to the
merely incidental, is seen in this belated recompense.
Not woman, Generatrix of Humanity and inspiration of all that is fairest
in Humanity, has been now honoured--but woman the bus-conductor,
ticket-clipper, clerk and agricultural labourer, woman in breeches and
workman's overall, woman whom German frightfulness had dislocated for a
space from her high lot and labours; twisting her powers awry to fit a
hideous revulsion of barbarism.
How, if the gods ever laugh at the fantastic tricks of poor mankind,
they must now have laughed (or wept) over the opportunity that one sex
had--and forfeited--to requite the other's finest merit.
How deeply-moving and far-reaching in its impulse and its inspiration
would have been the tribute, had it been made in reverent gratitude to
the mothers-of-men who had saved the world by mothering the men who
saved the Empire--For achievement stamped with the high and unique
quality of service that woman alone could have rendered. And not
because, when tested by men's standards, she proved herself a worthy
second-best in doing things that men have always done.
The gods must long have wept, I think, that men had thought so lightly
of the women living every day beside them, surrendering their lives and
powers, their interests, desires and individuation; toiling over
cooking-pans and wash-tubs, tied for years to children's cots, for life
to some or another person's sick-bed; smothering talents, impulse,
hopes, impatiences, to find the soft and simple word; solacing,
inspiring, making-believe above an aching spirit and a breaking heart
that all was fair and well with the world. And, moreover, in every
generation making these beautiful fictions ever a fraction more truth
and less fiction. For the gods alone know how that kindlier, purer and
more tender Home-environment which women have created in men's
stony-hearted cities involves the most laborious, heart-wearing, complex
and widest exercise of faculty of any human task.
Women themselves had long been tiring of it; stung to the soul and
mortified by centuries of man's ingratitude--when not contempt.
Nevertheless, where love and duty did not, chains of custom and
tradition bound them faithful to their oars.
Till German Frightfulness releasing them, the cry is now:
Since you can do something better and more profitable than merely to row
the old Galley of Life--since you can do men's work, forsooth, come out
into the market-place and help us pay our big War-Bill!
And yet--Whither will drift the Galley of Life when its rowers put their
strength elsewhere?
II
In the haze of false sentiment exaggerating--not the value of masculine
work done by the sex during War, because this was, of course, invaluable
and indispensable, but exaggerating, absolutely, the values of this work
as compared with the woman's work it had been doing previously, the
decision to admit women to Parliament was a precipitate and an
ill-considered measure, by no means innocent of party motive.
Threatening, as it does, a drastic sweep of all political, economic and
every other difference between the standards, training, and employment
of the sexes, it was pressed forward, nevertheless, not only with
characteristic masculine failure to recognise the vital significance of
the other sex in Human Things, but in utter blindness to social and
racial consequences, immediate and remote, which make it possibly the
most momentous decision ever arrived at in the history of human
progress.
Showing how little it was known for the turning-point in our great
destiny, the question was debated with unseemly levity, while less than
half the parliamentary members troubled (or had hardihood) to record
their votes; the abstention of the others proving which way blew the
straws of their faint wills. And of those voting in favour, half,
perhaps, did so (as some confessed) under intimidation of otherwise
losing their seats. (What would be said of the soldier who should turn
his back upon the enemy for fear of losing life even?)
No more than twenty-five found courage to say their "No's" like honest
gentleman.
Yet far from Enfranchisement having been a burning need blazing in the
hearts of women, their newly-awarded vote required to be spurred and
whipped out of all but a small minority. Or coaxed from them by
abandoning appeal on all the wider issues of Imperial and national
policy, and, in so far as their interest was sought, by reducing the
programme to personal and domestic issues--electric lighting in their
parlours, hot-water taps in their kitchens, and so forth.
And here was seen, at once, the threat of a grave and an increasing
diversion from that purely political outlook of men, which should be
impersonal in issue, broad in enterprise. Not that the human and
domestic side is a whit less momentous than the more abstract and
national. But appealing to a different order of mind, it demands that
different order of mind which characterises the woman-sex, to deal with
it effectively.
The plea that women will acquire in time the masculine political
view-point threatens, on the other hand, the loss in them of their own
highly-specialised and invaluable interests, morale and qualities;
which, being womanly of impulse and of trend, make for the individual
welfare, happiness and elevation of the nation's members.
III
As with every other human function, there are two departments of
politics. And the House of Commons represents man's.
It stands for all that is best accomplished politically by his
highly-specialised order of brain; by his concrete energy and
initiative, his justice and rationalism, his power of administration,
and his uncompromising sternness--pitilessness, if need be--to deal with
and to punish crime and aggression, national and international. It
stands, in a word, for that virile outlook and the virile grip in
Statesmanship which are indispensable to materialise a people's
prosperity and to pioneer its progress. These are the functions of
_men_. Just as the Army and Navy, Science and Commerce, are the
functions of men. Because the male bent and intellect are those best
fitted to raise these developments to their highest and most effective
issues, just as the male physique and energy are best fitted to achieve
these issues in material results.
Had anything been needed to emphasise the values of such virile
characteristics in the administration of a nation's policy, the War
furnished it. And the many blunders and vacillations marring the conduct
of the War emphasised the lack of these invaluable masculine qualities
in the concurrent House of Commons. Army, Navy, and Air-Services proved
their manhood doughtily in their respective provinces. Had they been
supplemented by an equally virile Statesmanship, the War, having begun,
would have been brought to a speedy termination. In point of fact, it
would never have begun.
If now, our British politics are already so lacking in the manly ability
and grip indispensable to national permanence and progress, the presence
of women in Parliament can but further emasculate these. It may be said
that some women outside the House are more male of mind and mode (not to
speak of muscle) than are some men inside. But this is reason, surely,
for replacing these weak males by stronger ones, rather than for
adulterating British statesmanship with Femaleness.
The presence of a masculine woman in a house--whether this be writ with
a small or a capital letter--far from stiffening the manly calibre of
weak men in it, only further enervates and paralyses them. To serve on a
committee of mixed sex is to realise this.
Women should be represented in the counsels of the nation--but not in
the councils of men. They should have a House of their own, wherein to
foster the interests of women and children mainly, as well as to further
The Humanities and The Moralities; which are, at the same time, woman's
true political sphere and her chiefest concern--because she and the
child most suffer from failures thereof. Thus, the House of Men would be
relieved of problems their sex is unqualified to deal with. While more
time and energy would be left them to dispose of affairs they are best
fitted to administer.
As already pointed out, the all-potent factor of Sex intervening,
members of neither sex are capable of doing their best work while in
association with the other. Sex-rivalries are stirred, or
sex-antagonisms. Either of which range the sexes on opposite sides; thus
precluding amicable co-operation. Or they engender sex-ascendancy.
Which, making one sex dominate or defer to the other, precludes
intelligent co-operation. Through all, moreover, only too often run
threads of intrigue, to entangle and hamper the powers of both.
British politics have notably declined since woman's incursion therein.
British commerce, once supreme among the nations, has notably declined
since women entered business-houses. Good and thorough work demands,
beyond all things, undivided concentration of the powers upon it. And
for nine persons out of ten, this concentration is impossible while in
the presence of members of the opposite sex. And emphatically this is
true of the male, since woman exercises a hypnotic, and, accordingly, an
enervating influence upon him. Worse still, he poses for her: becoming
meretricious and insincere. It is held by some that women in Parliament
might elevate the codes and modes of latter-day politics, many of our
best men withholding themselves therefrom because of bad odour imparted
by self-seeking and unscrupulous politicians.
But let us keep our House of Commons a House of men, and make it
representative of the nation's finest manhood. It is the first and
foremost function of the sex, the way of national success and progress.
And just as the presence of women would blunt the pioneering spirit and
cripple the action of a party of Arctic explorers, so women in the House
must blunt the enterprise and hamper the exploits of Statesmanship.
So far, the good sense alike of women as of men has declared against the
innovation; rejecting, by large majorities, all but one of women
Parliamentary candidates. It remains to be seen, however, whether men
outside the House will later endorse the new departure, by electing
members of the other sex to represent them. A thing impossible for one
sex to do for the other, of course, seeing that not only do men and
women arrive at their different conclusions by wholly different routes,
but all questions bear wholly different values for them.
It may be argued that the existence of dual departments of politics, and
dual points-of-view is argument for electing representatives of both
sexes to The Commons. Not so, however. Each sex is specialist in its
own domain. And an aurist wastes time, and most likely blunders, when he
applies himself to treat eye-diseases. An oculist wastes time, and
probably blunders, when delicate ear-operations are required of him.
Since by his dual constitution, moreover, man possesses, by inheritance
from his mother, the quotum of woman-apprehension, foresight, and
altruism required to present the woman-bent and view-point in his
outlook and conduct of political and civic affairs, woman's personal
intervention in these is as superfluous as it would be harmful.
Further, there are two orders of men: An order strictly male in trend
and talent, and an order whose mentality is tinctured with a higher than
average proportion of womanly conservatism, sympathy and intuition. And
these two orders of male--typified, respectively, by the Conservative
and the Radical parties--perpetually struggling to secure the measures
prompted by their respective orders of mind, and intermittently gaining
ascendancy, sustain a poise, or mean, between the unduly conservative
and traditional, and the unduly radical and transitional in our
political administration.
These two orders of mentality are found again in Youth and Age. All
healthy and vigorous-minded young men are radical of bias; hot-headed,
precipitate and intolerant of crusted orthodoxy, keen to demolish old
institutions and established methods. While maturity makes for
conservatism. It _knows_. And having learned by experience the values of
institutions which have become institutions because of their values, it
is prudent in its counsels of slow and stable reform, in its distrust of
drastic, precipitate change, and, beyond all, in its wise misdoubtings
of the world in general as being better than it is, and ripe,
accordingly, for the best things.
For the present, there are numberless problems and questions of women's
industrial employment, of children's employment, of the industrial
supervision of young girls and their moral protection; problems of
female drunkenness and prostitution, crimes of children, crimes against
infants and children; questions of health, of the education and
upbringing of the young, of dress and conduct, and of the general moral
purification and the mental elevation of the Race--with all of which
women are essentially qualified to deal; and the vital national
importance whereof men have proved themselves as incapable of
apprehending as they have shown themselves powerless to administer them.
The two classes of national problems, or the two departments into which
most of these problems might be advantageously sub-classed, should be
recognised as being the functions, respectively, of the one or of the
other sex, and should be deputed for consideration to the House of Men
or to the House of Women. With the result that in both, every problem of
reform would be dealt with by the sex specialised by nature, by
sympathy, and by training, best to understand and best to legislate for
it.
As with The Lords, either House should have power to question or to
reject the conclusions of the other.
We need urgently, indeed, such a House of Women to employ its native
wisdom, its intuitive apprehension, and its moral and emotional impulse,
and, moreover, to bring its experience and tact to bear upon a
hundred-and-one tangled and neglected issues of moral and social reform.
In order to remedy evils that have come, from long neglect, to be a
cancer, slowly and surely sapping and vitiating our national life and
endangering our racial supremacy.
IV
That women may do useful work in male departments of politics and
economics is quite beside the question. Far more valuable work is needed
and is possible from them in their own especial fields of aptitude. In
these latter, moreover, they would be fostering, in place of
sacrificing, that morale and those distinctive talents Nature has
specialised in them. While their withdrawal _in toto_ from male
political and economic functions would put men on their mettle, and
stimulate their efforts and achievement therein.
Woman's influence, like that of Religion, is most potent when it is
indirect and inspirational. Like the Church, when she exchanges her
indirect and devotional ministrations for direct and material ones,
temporal or militant, she destroys herself or the peoples she dominates.
Or she destroys both.
It is common fallacy that so long as the world's work is done and its
affairs tolerably well conducted, it is of no significance whatsoever by
which sex these ends are attained.
Sight is lost of the intrinsic truth that Life exists for Man--not Man
for Life; its purpose being the evolution of the human Species by way of
the evolution of human Faculty. The world's work has no slightest value
save as spur and instrument of human education. And the evolution of the
dual orders of human Faculty having differentiated the human Species
into two sexes, each representing a wholly different order of
Faculty--obviously the perfection of both orders of Faculty and,
accordingly, the further evolution of both sexes wherein these orders
are respectively specialised, can be attained only by the exercise, by
each order, of the rôle and the functions that best evoke its powers.
If, therefore, the male sex repudiates its allotted rôle and functions,
and forfeits, in consequence, the education of its distinctive talents
and moral, by shelving its responsibilities upon the other sex,
howsoever capable a substitute this other sex may prove itself, man acts
as foolishly and fatuously as the schoolboy who shirks his schooling and
the discipline thereof, by enlisting his capable sister to do his
lessons for him.
It is, at the same time, man's duty and his privilege manfully to
shoulder and ably to perform his own allotted part in Life's affairs.
Evading this, or from a false conception of chivalry allowing woman to
usurp a share therein, he degenerates inevitably; in default of his
natural spur to development. Moreover he obliges--or connives at woman
doing likewise, in respect of her allotted part.
That he has already grown so slack, his virile pride and enterprise have
so far lapsed, as to reconcile him to woman's usurpation of his
masculine functions and prerogatives should warn him of incipient
dry-rot in him. As too, the portentous fact that had he not declined in
physical and mental calibre, she could never so readily and efficiently
have taken his place as we have seen her doing. So efficiently, indeed,
that he will be hard put to it to regain and to retain his lost
professional and industrial footing, by proving himself appreciably the
better man.
As Dr. Havelock Ellis says, if they are to cope with the new Feminism,
men must needs look to their laurels and produce a new Masculinism. For
truly these weak-chinned, neurotic young men of the rising generation
are no match at all for the heavy-jawed, sinewy, resolute young women
Feminist aims and methods are giving us.
On every side, in politics, literature, journalism, oratory, commerce,
even in scientific invention, women are swiftly coming up abreast of
men, and threaten shortly to out-distance them.--And this upon their own
ground.
On the other hand, the finer and more exquisite womanly qualities and
aptitudes, the emotions and devotions; purity, sweetness, patience,
forbearance, tenderness, lovingness and lovableness, together with the
courtesies and graces, have fallen out of culture and are fast declining
toward extinction. And this, in the measure of the mushroom-growth of
masculine abilities and aims and bent, now substituted for them in the
sex. With which decline of womanly characteristics, the religion and
nobility, virility and chivalry, manly reverence and regard for women,
wherewith the true mother illumines the souls of her sons, and which are
man's response to the appeal of true woman, are waning rapidly also.
There is, in all men worth the name, an instinctive recognition that the
world's most strenuous labours and the world's administration are their
natural functions, and that upon their sex, accordingly, rests the
responsibility alike of progress or decline in these directions.
This sense of responsibility is both stimulating and uplifting, in the
degrees of its realisation and fulfilment. The yielding, by man, to the
other sex, of masculine essential rights and obligations is, at the same
time, a symptom in him of declining virility, physical and mental, and a
cause inevitable of his further speedy decadence. The position yielded,
and equality in all things ceded to woman, that pride in his sex, in
himself, and in his work, which were his strongest incentives to
progress, drop to ever lower grades. Until he comes at last to the state
of the decadent savage, who keeps as many wives to work for him as their
work for him enables him to keep.
The spirit and pride of Sex are normal and inspiring, and are the
expression of that impulse which has directed, in both sexes, the
contrary trend of both. No man of mettle feels ever again the same zest
or spur to achievement in a rôle that has become equally woman's.
Arrogance? Possibly. But wholesome and energising. Defect of that pride
in his man's mission which inspired Drake, Columbus, Nelson, Cæsar,
Shakespeare, Newton, to great conquest. Without it, man ceases to be
man. That it is a factor to be reckoned with, was proved by the recent
election, which was signalised by being woman's first authorised entry
into the political arena--and was characterised by nothing so much as by
man's indifference, even his neglect to record his vote. And that it is
a factor to be reckoned with, is further and seriously proved by the
slackness and diminished zest and output of masculine Labour, since the
other sex has invaded the field.
Woman, for her part, is characterised by a similar spirit and pride of
her sex. Equally she loses it when men intrude upon her province. And
this Sex-pride and spirit in her would be nobly intensified and uplifted
to ever higher levels of expression and attainment, were she but assured
of the fine quality and issues of those woman-faculties and functions,
by way of which it is her privilege first to create Life, and afterwards
to minister to it.
A potent factor in man's impotence to hold his own either in moral or
achievement, when pitted directly against the other sex, is that power
many women exercise of recruiting their vital forces from those of
persons--and of men, particularly--in association with them. The highest
levels of work and inspiration are the product of _reserve_ and surplus
forces. When these are depleted, only languid and lower-grade aims and
capacities are possible.
The extent to which over-worked women may impair the health and
constitutional vigour of men associated with them in work was strikingly
shown during the changed conditions of War. Surrounded by over-wrought
girls and women, who kept themselves going by stimulus of nervous
excitement, of strong tea or more dangerous drugs, many men, co-workers
or heads of departments, became neurasthenic wrecks. Others lapsed to
the condition of infirm old men. The like was seen in fathers and
husbands of such over-wrought War-workers. And nervous depletion
occasioned by working-wives has doubtless much to do with the inanition
and depression now crippling our industrial output.
I may be charged with holding a brief for the Enemy-sex. If so, it is
not only because man's cause is woman's, but, moreover, because his
present disposition to surrender his prerogatives all round shows him
dangerously blind to the truth of woman's power; misdirection whereof
from its natural channels menaces not only him, but woman herself, and
the Race. _Find the woman!_ said the French cynic. Jestingly: because he
no more than other men had gauged the profundity of the saying, in all
its deep and vast biological phenomena and implications.
Our national survival stands in jeopardy already, indeed, from the
lower-grade males--narrow-brained neurotics or feeble-brained
neurasthenics--whom latter-day women are producing yearly in tens of
thousands. And the deplorable truth of this degeneracy is overlooked,
because no more than a fractional number of our doctors distinguish
between The Normal and The Average. With the result, that comparing an
abnormal with others more abnormal, they declare the less abnormal
satisfactory. Of the fine physique, the vital health and faculty, the
zest and joy of living which characterise true Normality--and which are
the birthright of every human being--only the few have any conception.
It is significant that the sole ancient civilisations now surviving,
India and China, have never hazarded their chances of survival by
emancipating their women. On the other hand, because their women are in
bondage, personally and psychologically, and because their women's vital
powers are exhausted by laborious and de-sexing occupations, the moral
and material progress of these peoples is at low ebb.
V
Recruiting statistics have shown us the Damocles-sword of Decadence
suspended by a hair above our heads; have shown us our great people so
riddled with disease, defect and abnormality, that nearly _half our
manhood was declared_ unfitted for man's elementary duty of fighting for
his country (55·9 per cent. only being classed in Grade I.). All that
our centuries of evolutionary progress have achieved for us, all that
the Race has achieved for itself by faculty and enterprise, integrity
and industry, threatens now to be sacrificed to a Feminist fanaticism,
which, denying to woman any more vital or tender human faculties or
offices than those of man, has increasingly repudiated all else for her
than rights to pit her wits and muscles against his.
England has long been, and has once again proved herself supreme among
the nations. Because England, more than any other land, had freed her
women from the more laborious industrial employments; leaving them, in
consequence, more vital power to put into the making of a splendid Race,
fine of body, stable of character; the men of it charged with virile
energy and enterprise, the women house-proud, home-abiding; faithful
wives and admirable mothers.
Recruiting statistics have valuably emphasised the truth that in those
localities where women are most employed in labour, there disease and
degeneracy are most rampant. Significantly it was shown that
colliery-districts and the Universities (the latter with about 80 per
cent. of Grade I. men), were conspicuous in providing the greatest
number of men qualified for military service. Why? Because neither the
mothers of men enrolled in Universities, nor, for the most part, those
of colliery-districts, are employed industrially.
While, on the other hand, the health and physique of cotton-mill
operatives proved so "alarmingly low" that of 184 weavers and spinners
only 57 could even be passed for Army-training. Of 290 examined, only 57
men of one cotton-spinning town were graded I.; only 64 were graded II.,
while 169 were graded III. and IV.
Again, _Why_? Because, unlike colliery-districts where the standard of
health was notably good, in cotton-towns where physique and health were
"alarmingly low" the vast majority of wives and mothers are employed in
factories. It is important, moreover, to note that in such gradings of
men for military service, even those classed first were by no means
necessarily normal or vigorous. On the contrary, many passed were later
shown defective, by breakdown under stress of military discipline.
Further, that so many as 20 _per cent._ of the young manhood of our
highest culture were disqualified for Grade I. is a serious
circumstance.
Mr. Lloyd George has said regarding this most vital question: "The next
great lesson of the war is that if Britain has to be thoroughly equipped
to meet any emergencies, the State must take a more constant and a more
intelligent interest in the health and fitness of the people. If the
Empire is to be equal to its task, the men and women who make up the
Empire must be equal to it. The number of B2 and C3 men is prodigious. I
asked the Minister of National Service how many more men could we have
put into the fighting ranks if the health of the country had been
properly looked after. I staggered at the reply: '_At least a
million_.' A virile race has been wasted by neglect and want of
forethought, and it is a danger to the State and to the Empire. I
solemnly warn my fellow countrymen that you cannot maintain an A1 Empire
with a C3 population."
This estimate of abnormality, by reason of a million of the nation's
young manhood disqualified by definite disease, defect or degeneracy, is
far below the mark. Because owing to the urgent need for fighting men,
the standard of fitness was compulsorily low. And the estimate takes no
account of the huge number of such low-grade "Fit," who succumbed in
death or incapacitation to the strain of military training, or to the
vicissitudes of active service.
The _British Medical Journal_ has published figures showing that of
2,080,709 men examined by Medical Boards--the men constituting "a fair
sample of the male population between the ages of 18 and 43, and a
smaller proportion of the more fit between 43 and 51"--_only 1 in 3
could be classed in Grade I_. That is, out of every 150 members of our
British manhood in its best years of life, _only 50 were up to the mark
in health and normality_.
The _Journal_ comments on "this mass of physical inefficiency, with all
its concomitant human misery, and direct loss to the country."
Sir Auckland Geddes, addressing the Federation of British Industries,
stated that "_appalling facts about the health of the nation have been
disclosed in reports of medical examinations carried out by recruiting
authorities_." One of the most startling and disquieting of these
disclosures was that of hundreds of thousands of our men, between the
ages of 18 and 43, dying of tuberculosis.
Despite all this, however, because our authorities fear to face the
truth and the drastic economic upheaval involved in the prohibition of
all young wives and mothers from the stress of breadwinning, attempt is
being made to shelve the whole blame of this appalling state of national
health upon faulty industrial and hygienic conditions; too long hours of
work, imperfect ventilation, bad housing, inferior cooking, poor wages,
and so forth. All factors, of course, but only contributory to the great
vital one. And in order to placate the public conscience, reforms in
these directions are promised. Excellent and sadly needed reforms, it is
true--in so far as they go; but bound to failure because they will not
go to the root of things. They will be tried, no doubt, in our promised
Reconstruction-scheme. But being palliative merely, further holocausts
of human life and faculty and happiness will be sacrificed in the
experiment.
Sooner or later--and Heaven send it be sooner lest it come too
late!--the truth must be confronted, and the crisis met. The further the
Feminism now threatening our downfall secures footing, however, and more
and more diverts the nation's life-resources into merely economic
channels, more and more squanders them in abnormal ambitions and output,
the more deeply-rooted and more desperate will have become the cancer of
our national decadence. And incalculably the more difficult and
dangerous will be the task of its eradication.
The reform should have come while _man_ still held the reins securely in
his grasp--ere Feminism had entrenched itself and its deforming aims and
powers behind an enfranchised woman-sex; to intimidate and out-number
his own. Because women in general, misled by these false standards, and,
moreover, deteriorated by de-sexing training, become every year less and
less disposed toward home and family-life; less and less willing to
burden themselves with the duties and sacrifices indispensable to the
proper fulfilment of wife and motherhood. And now, more than ever, when
they are still further to be pitted against men in the industrial
struggle, woman-instincts and aptitudes will become ever more warped and
enfeebled in them.
The Danger menacing us is the graver because, while Disease is the
expression of a healthy vital conscience protesting, in terms of pain
and disability, against conditions, environmental or personal, adverse
to normal states of health and development (and to which the healthy
living organism declines therefore to conform), Degeneracy is
characterised by a vital conscience of so low an order that it conforms
and adapts the type, without pain or protest, to conditions perversive
of healthy normality and of further evolutionary advance.
There comes a stage, accordingly, in Racial decline, when the Racial
vital conscience no longer rebels, in terms of Disease, but conforms, in
terms of Degeneracy, to artificial, abnormal and evil conditions of
living, environmental and personal. And then as happened to those mighty
civilisations snuffed out before us--the major portion of the community
having lapsed from health and normality into decadent states of mind and
body, vice and corruption become its Normal both of mind and body. Evil
and chaos run riot. Till Nature, defied and transgressed at every turn,
opens the vials of her wrath, and pours forth her microbic myriads to
sow death and destruction wholesale.
Thus she sweeps from the board of Life another great Race--that had
failed.
VI
Already, there are disquieting signs that the physical disease and
abnormality among us have engendered such degrees of mental and of moral
aberration as may lead at any hour to grave disruption. Below the quiet
order of our British constitution are heard, from time to time, the
rumble of chaotic and disintegrating forces. With growing frequency, the
shriek of anarchy shrills. Red flags break. We shall be truly fortunate
if we succeed in bridging over, without more or less serious upheaval,
the critical gap between War and Peace.
Woman is Nature's peacemaker and welder. She it is who, in the home,
knits the loose ends of the multiple incongruous and turbulent human
elements into social unities--families, friendly communities, townships
and peoples--by her annealing powers of affection and sympathy, of
charity and intuitive understanding.
"_Keep the Home-fires burning!_" sang our soldiers. No considerations of
The British Constitution, the London Stock Exchange, or Worshipful Civic
Company, fired them to heroism, spurred them to victory. But for the
Home-fires burning in suburban villas, in four-roomed cottages or
two-room lodgings--as equally in hereditary mansions--it was, our
gallants dared and died, and reaped their glorious triumph.
My father, an early and an earnest advocate of Female enfranchisement,
used to counsel Lord Beaconsfield that to enfranchise women would be to
establish the Conservative party for a century, at least. Because nine
out of ten women were, in those days, Conservative.
Since then, Feminism has been active, however. Less by way of direct
propaganda of anarchy or Bolshevism, be it said, than by fostering that
masculine bent and spirit of material unrest and discontent which
destroy in women all the finer, fairer ideals and attributes of their
intrinsic womanhood, and those self-denying ordinances which so sweeten
and dignify the humblest tasks as to content the doers of them with the
inspiring sense that they are worth the while. With the result that
nothing so characterises the great mass of latter-day working women as a
smouldering irrational and intemperate Socialism. And the Socialism of
working-women (as, too, of the majority of working-men) is based on
total ignorance of the impracticability and evil of making for
universal equality in a vast Scheme of Things, the values and the
ultimate successes whereof depend absolutely on preserving those
highly-specialised diversities and inequalities, alike of faculty and
bent, into which Life, with its countless degrees of evolutionary
development, has progressively graded living creatures, brute and human.
The innumerable orders and classes of our sociology are as inevitable as
they are invaluable. Because they serve for stages of faculty and
avocation upon that biological gradient of Ascent by which we climb.
As was pointed out earlier in this book, woman, although passive and
reposeful of inherence, is variable and unstable of temperament; her
powers being eternally at ebb and flux, in order that she may be the
medium of those evolutionary mutations which engender human progress. A
nature truly perilous when too great dominance is permitted the sex in
affairs so momentous as those of State-administration, upon the firm
stability and permanence whereof depend so many destinies. Because this
evolutionary impulsiveness of hers is dangerously liable to express
itself in irresponsible, chaotic and anarchical outbreaks. As history
shows, wreckage of many once mighty, but now extinct, civilisations set
in when the males thereof weakly, or basely, surrendered their manhood's
rights of rule to a sex disqualified by its native non-conformability to
rule in national and international policies.
Should women ever come to exercise political power identical with man's,
they would be liable to subvert the whole national and international
administration of their country on an impulse. Not solely from craving
for novelty, but, too, as result of their inherent bent toward forward
and precipitate movement, and their implicit faith in change as being
necessarily _reform_.
Nations in which the feminine element is strong betray the native
fickleness thereof in perpetual change of Ministry--even in frequent
revolution. This element of instability is Ireland's curse, the flaw in
her people's splendid Celtic faculty.
In view of the stern and strenuous and narrowly-rationalistic creed and
claims of Feminism, as too of the steel-brained, steel-willed fighting
women leading it, men may scoff, with sense of false security, at odds
of danger from feminine weakness and fickleness in Feminist ranks. They
scoffed just so at the menace of Prussianism--whereof Feminism is the
female rendering.
It must always be remembered, moreover, that the civic and political
privileges ceded to Woman, the Feminist, are ceded alike to that
freakish, irresponsible creature Woman, the Femininist, who, to
counterbalance the decline of woman-quality in those others of her sex,
adds to her number and her freakishness as those others wax in number
and in stern determination. And in a House of Commons of mixed sex,
Feminists would find, to their undoing, that here as elsewhere the
Ultra-Feminines would speedily outnumber and out-power themselves. The
Movement, inaugurated in all the stern and sterile sex-insensibility of
the Feminist code, would soon be dry-rotten and corrupt with the
weaknesses bred of Effeminacy.
Nor should it be forgotten that the present Feminist leaders it was who,
by their dangerous Bolshevist tactics of Militant Suffragism, proclaimed
the anarchy seething in themselves and their adherents.
So long as there survives within the breast of man a spark of that
Chivalry which has been both the inspiring and impelling power of his
virile development, he can neither meet, nor can he treat with woman
upon equal terms.
Always the aspects of her in capacities of mother, wife or love (or
mistress) must intervene to disarm, and to incapacitate him from
exerting his full strength against her. Whether her appeal to him be
sacred or profane, accordingly--that of woman at her best or at her
worst--always so long as he is man, her highest and most tender (as her
basest) appeal will be by way of those woman-Unfitnesses which in every
age have served as highest incentive of his Fitnesses; that he might
win, safeguard and cherish her. This chivalrous instinct it was, in
part--for behind it lurked the recognition of more than half a nation
suffering from the wrong of Unenfranchisement--which disarmed and
paralysed his action in respect of those same Suffragist outbreaks. And
so long as he is man, will he be similarly disarmed and dangerously
inhibited from meeting and from battling successfully with woman.
History repeats itself. And if men suppose that they have seen the last
of female Militancy, and overlook the menacing truth that their own
incapacity to cope with this must increase inevitably in direct
proportion to woman's waxing power, they are blind, indeed, to dangerous
breakers ahead.
Having sown the fickle wind of woman's variability, they are like to
reap the whirlwind in her inherent non-conformability; a difficult and
parlous factor such as they have never previously encountered in
political and industrial administration. Such non-conformability as is
seen at an extreme in the anarchy of revolutions; in which women, having
lost control and balance, plunge deeper and deeper into excesses,
without power, it would seem, of recoil. While men reach a maximum,
recover poise, and then setting about to re-constitute order out of
chaos, more often than not evolve a higher form of order than had
previously obtained.
VII
Secure in their traditional superior strength, however, and with
characteristic complacency in this relation, men have no suspicion of
the sex-antagonism--hatred even--seething against them in Feminism. And
this far from having been annealed or softened, has been, on the
contrary, greatly aggravated by the concessions and new privileges
lately accorded the sex.
Strange to say, the chief talk of extremist women in their new
War-capacities was bitterest grievance and hostility against the male,
because, although installed in masculine positions, they were denied
rights identical with his; of rank and recognition, of responsibility
and pay. That they held these capacities temporarily merely, and as
novices and amateurs, while men held theirs as experts, for long service
or for superior values by right of masculine abilities, had no weight
whatsoever. Never in all her days of so-called subjection has woman been
so loud and denunciatory of the injustices of The Oppressor, of his
conspiracies and crimes against her, as since she has been yielded a
number of those rights which Feminism claims.
Feminists will say this is because complete equality in all things has
not yet been granted--has yet to be fought for. The truth is, however,
that the interests and functions of men fail wholly to satisfy the
wholly dissimilar natures of women. But until they have realised
this--the true reason of their discontent--an ever-increasing number of
women will continue to make these their coveted goal, and to chafe with
anger and bitterest resentment against the other sex for denying them
full measure of things--without intrinsic value for them.
* * * * *
It needs no saying by me, that, apart from the Feminist extremist
faction, the Woman's Movement includes a number of the sex
characterised by the noblest ideals and impulse, as by the finest
achievements; their creed and aims being pure of self-seeking or
materialist ambitions for themselves or for their kin. And these it is
to whom we owe it, that, amid the clamour and the combat of those
others, the spirit of true Womanhood, devoted, wise and altruistic, is
making itself felt everywhere in modern thought and modern progress.
Such women for the most part discredit Feminism, in many cases directly
oppose both its doctrine and practice.
VIII
The huge numerical preponderance of women must, of itself, presently
swamp all masculine power and initiative in State affairs unless the
political functions of the sexes be separated. Thenceforward, _Vox
populi_ must be the voice of Woman--man's having ceased to be heard.
And man's chiefest menace lies, be it reiterated to the point of tedium,
in that momentous fact of the biological investment in woman, of the
Racial Trustfund. For this is, at the same time, his sole heritage and
that of the nation. And not only does it constitute her the custodian of
Human Life and Faculty but it makes her arbitress as well of man's and
of the nation's destiny.
In yielding his House of Parliament, man has surrendered not only his
highest and most characteristic prerogative, but he has yielded the last
exclusive stronghold of his manhood. An entrenchment indispensable to
his difficult task of holding his own against a sex overwhelmingly
superior in number, and chartered, by right of womanhood, with
time-honoured baffling privileges which handicap and defeat him at all
turns. A sex Nature has armoured with charms, moreover, and with
weaknesses for his disarming; by appeal, on the one hand, to his
chivalry, on the other, to his senses.
Entrenched in his last stronghold, he stood some chance of exerting his
allotted dominance in life's affairs. All his strongholds invaded, he
stands none.
For the rest, it can only be said that men who should reject their own,
and elect members of the opposite sex to represent them in Parliament,
would by that vote alone of non-confidence in the ability or the good
faith of their kind, proclaim the human male a pitiful failure in
species; an order without specialisation of brain, of character, or of
moral, to give it essential values in Human concerns.
Woman, on the other hand, would stand acclaimed a Super-Being. One not
only highly-specialised by God and Nature, as creatrix of the Race, and
endowed with gifts to be the Racial nurse and guide and teacher, but,
added to these most vital of human capacities, she would stand
accredited by man with such superior qualifications also for the
administration of the State as to lead him to adjudge her his superior
in this capacity likewise. While her still further pre-eminence is now
to be emphasised by pitting her on equal terms against the male, in all
the Arts and Crafts, the professions and the businesses.
Truly--poor Super-Being that she is to be--burdened and spent by her
super-tax of faculties and functions, she will need, indeed, to break
into the Racial Trust-Fund, in order to equip herself for these her
multifarious exactions. Because not only will it be her affliction to
produce the Race and mother it, but she must provide for it too;
moreover, must doctor it, play lawyer, parson and accountant to it;
paint its pictures, mould its statuary, plan its architecture, build its
houses, compose its music, blow its trumpets, beat its drums; and, over
and beyond all these, must administer its politics, and serve it
presently, no doubt, as Premier, Primate and Chancellor.
While it must be merely a matter of brief time, when, to her other
tasks, will be added the manning of its Army, its Navy and Air-Services,
and the serving of its guns.
Should Feminist aims be realised--and already they are more than
half-won--it will be a case, truly, of _Exit Man!_
Rejected on all counts, as possessing no intrinsic sex-values, to offset
woman's vital and pre-eminent one of the creation of Life (for his
biological part in this is so slight and brief as to be unworthy of note
were it not indispensable, and will be insignificant, indeed, when he no
longer serves as highly-specialised agent and artificer of the Racial
faculty); possessing no distinctive qualities and no obligations of
fatherhood, to protect and to provide for offspring, and thereby to
offset woman's vital and important one of nurturing and rearing this; no
more than woman's equal (if that) in the Sciences and Arts, in Politics
and Commerce--Truly no alternative will be left him save to retire,
abased, into the dim background of the Human Pageant; a self-admitted
failure, without place or standing, by virile and exclusive right and
power of body, brain and office.
IX
A more inspiring picture presents itself, however.
Of a Manhood, worthy of its racial and national traditions, waking
timely to a recognition of its manhood's powers and duties, and, having
emancipated itself from woman's rule in all beside her natural province,
reinstating its supremacy in every virile field and function; and thus
re-shouldering bravely its allotted burdens in Labour, Faculty and
Administration.
Of a Womanhood re-finding itself also, and finding itself and its
natural lot upon a fairer and a nobler plane--the plane of Life, as
ever, but illumined now by broader outlook, and instinct with higher
understanding.
And these two working for the common good, of our Anglo-Saxon Race,
recruited by their sympathetic impulse and reciprocal achievement,
having been set, in course of a few generations, upon routes of such a
Human Renaissance as should carry it forward to fulfilment of its
splendid destiny.
In this New Human Dispensation would be a House of Women to serve as a
second--a balancing and an uplifting--wing to the House of Men.
Thus in the national as in the natural life, The Sexes would be most
effectively operating and co-operating; travelling each along its own
inherent and allotted lines, employing each its own intrinsic powers and
fulfilling its intrinsic functions, apart from, but abreast of and in
continual touch with the other; inspiring, fortifying, supplementing and
complementing the attributes, the trend and the achievements, each of
each.
* * * * *
Said Mazzini, "_Man and Woman are the two human Wings that lift the soul
toward the Ideal we are destined to attain_." And the value and the
effectiveness of these two human, as of other wings, lie in the degree
to which, although they work in unison, _they move in different areas_;
apart from and independent, each of the other; balancing and
correlating, but, nevertheless, each sustaining its own side of the
body, Vital and Social.
APPENDIX
FURTHER EVIDENCES IN SUPPORT OF THE BIOLOGICAL AND MENDELIAN
PROPOSITIONS ADVANCED IN BOOK I.
I
_The Male is the impelling force in Physical Development, or
Adaptation to environment_
Scientific stock-breeding supplies valuable practical examples of
applied Genetics, or the Science of Heredity.
Although artificial, in the sense that the creatures of the Stock-yard
are not mated by law of Natural Selection, nor are they bred or reared
under normal environmental conditions, the circumstance that breeders
are breeding for special characteristics, and mate the parents with a
view to the transmission and the accentuation of such, provides
important indications regarding hereditary influence and its determinant
factors.
Mr. Horace G. Regnart, who has done much to establish Stock-breeding on
a scientific basis, kindly furnishes me with the following interesting
and suggestive data:
"We Breeders pay more attention to the bull because he can sire fifty
calves yearly; while the cow can produce only one. One can afford to pay
a thousand guineas for a bull, whereas one cannot afford fifty cows at
the same price. And the purchase of a first-class bull is the cheapest
way of getting a good herd. The history of practically every great herd
is the history of some particular bull. As we say, '_a bull is half the
herd_.' It is equally true to say that every great bull is the son of a
great cow. With one highly-prepotent bull we can raise a high-class
herd, even if we start with second-rate females; while a bad bull will
ruin the best herd in the county. It is for this reason that we 'put all
our money' on the bull."
All of which supports my theory that the male is the impelling agency
in Adaptation to Environment, or evolutionary development on the plane
of physics, and that such progressive development is achieved by way of
the male traits being Dominant upon this plane, and manifesting,
accordingly, in the physical terms of stature and muscle and
force-production.
The male being the determinant agent in the physical characteristics of
size and flesh and nervous energy--for which breeders of Live-stock are
making--the bull is "half the herd." "With one highly-prepotent bull," a
high-class herd may be raised, even though inaugurated with second-rate
females. Whilst "a bad bull will ruin the best herd in the county." Akin
to which is the circumstance that, in two generations, the improvement
which occurs in the offspring of a New Forest pony-mare when mated with
a horse, lapses; the descendants reverting to the type of the New Forest
pony.
If, however, the male, being the agent of Adaptation, determines
progressive development in the direction of such physical traits as
further fit species to its material environment, the female it is, that,
being the agency of the Evolution of Life (and of the equipment of
species in terms of Life, accordingly) supplies offspring with the Vital
potential of living cells and vital organs--heart, lungs, digestive and
assimilative organs and functions--which, by engendering the multiple
functions and vital processes of Life, _sustain_ the existence and the
powers of the organism in relation to environment. The female, moreover,
provides it with the Vital potential of reproductive organs for the
transmission of types ever further evolved and adapted, in terms both of
Life and Adaptation.
The male thus broadly sketches out the lines and supplies the initiative
of structural development. The female supplements the sketch with the
structural potential of living cells, whereby structural development is
achieved; as too with the vital potential of organs whereby living
organisation is sustained and transmitted.
The great sire, bull or man, generates the great daughter. But since
Life is earlier in origin and precedes Development, the great mother it
must be who first _engenders_ the great son. Because, as I have already
pointed out, Life and Reproductive-Energy must exist in the potential
before they can evolve upon the plane of personal development. In other
words, function precedes structure. The potential of both function and
structure must precede the _development_ of either on the plane of Life.
Woman, accordingly, is Creatrix of the Race, because in her the Race
becomes potential. Man is Artificer of the Race, however, because from
him the Race receives its powers of concrete development.
For progressive evolutionary advance, therefore, every new generation of
females must contribute a new complement of Vital potential, equal in
potence to the new complement of Developmental initiative which the new
generation of males contribute, and by way of which the female Vital
potential is differentiated into further concrete powers. Fruitless for
one parent to supply a finer complement than the other is able to render
in terms, respectively, of Life or Development. The female potential
must be adequate to energise the male powers of differentiation. The
male powers must be adequate to differentiate the female potential.
II
_The female supplies the Typal and Vital Potentials of Adaptation_
To Mr. Regnart, I am indebted for the following further data, which seem
further to support my view:
"Ursula Raglan was a Beef-cow that milked heavily. To a Beef-bull, she
produced Gainford Champion--a great bull. While to a Dairy-bull, she
produced the dam of Priceless Princess--about the best Dairy-cow that
ever looked through a halter."
Here we find the Vital-potential indispensable to the equipment of great
offspring, proved great in the mother, by her Female vital-function of
lactation. While her respective bull-mates appear as the determinant
factors which differentiate this Vital potential in offspring,
respectively, into the Beef-traits (stature and muscle, that is) or the
Milking-traits (Vital function, that is). The very term "Dairy-bull,"
signifying a male with power to transmit to female descendants the
purely Female trait of milking, is evidence, in itself, of a female
trait, derived by a male from his mother, passing into the potential,
and lying dormant, or Recessive, for a generation, in his male
organisation, and then emerging again in his daughter.
The great bull is sire of a great cow--_because he was son of a great
cow_. And he is a great bull because he received from his dam a great
female Vital-potential, for differentiation into greatness of the male
traits that characterise great males. And in his turn, he may sire a cow
greater than his mother, because in passing on to his daughter the great
female Vital-potential of his mother, he passes on a female potential of
greatness to which his own male inherence of greatness has added a
further power of Differentiation. This increased _Male_ power of
differentiation, descending in the female line, however, manifests in
traits of increased _Female_ functioning--the function of milking, that
is.
The daughter inherits thus from her father the Female potential of her
paternal grandmother, with new power of Male differentiation acquired by
its residence during a generation (so to speak) in a male organisation.
Which new power, when reawakened to function in a female organism,
manifests in a further degree of Femaleness.
Male development having progressed along lines of increasing brain- and
nervous power, which the female has ever further inherited, Female
development has progressed along lines of such increasing brain-power as
has enabled her to transform her native simple and undifferentiated
Femaleness into ever further developed and more complex Female _traits_,
or functional and nervous characteristics.
While, on the other hand, since Female evolution has proceeded along
lines of increasing Life, or Vital Power, which the male has ever
further inherited this increasing Vital power it has been that has
served as _potential_ for the evolution of his Maleness in terms of
higher brain- and nervous power.
The great cow is mother of a great bull _because she was daughter of a
great sire_. And she was a great cow because she received from her sire
a great male complement of developmental power, which imparted to her
Recessive, and undifferentiated Femaleness, further power of functioning
as female characteristics. And she may mother a son greater even than
her sire because the great male Developmental impetus of her father
becomes in her a greater Vital potential; which, descending in the male
line, engenders further power for the further differentiation of male
characteristics.
III
_Evolution of Species and evolution of the Individual occur on
different planes_
The Evolution of Species progresses in every generation by way of each
Sex having derived from the other Sex a new and opposite potential to
engender, in every alternate generation, the further evolution of its
Sex-traits along its own (and contrary) lines.
It may be considered therefore that Type, or Species, evolves to higher
inherences by way of progressive divergences of Sex-characteristics.
While the Evolution of the individual progresses in every generation in
proportion as parents of both sexes had mated, in the previous
generation, with such members of the opposite sex as were best fitted to
supply, in the gametes contributed to offspring, complements which, by
union with their own, so matched and supplemented their own as to have
quickened and energised the development of offspring to the fullest and
the most efficient issues. In any line, however, a strain of greatness
or of other inherence descends in alternating succession, now in the
female, now in the male line; receding now into the potential, and then
evolving in development. So that while the Individual normally evolves
in every generation, the Type evolves only in alternate generations.
The evolution of Type, or Species, is the intrinsic function of the
spontaneous Evolution of Life into two orders of Sex. It occurs on a
wholly different plane from that of the evolution of the Individual. But
by way of his, or her, complement to the biological constitution of
offspring, members of both sexes contribute alike to the evolution of
_Species_ and to that of the _Individual_--according as such complement
enhances the power of the traits of the opposite Sex to manifest, and
further to evolve in offspring.
The intensification in the one sex of its own inherences stimulates a
proportional intensification of the opposite inherences in the other
Sex, both as regards the evolution of the Type and of the Individual.
The phenomenon would seem to be akin to that increase of one electrical
potential evoking a proportional increase of the other electrical
potential, to complement it. When one sex fails to supply its due
potential, or complement, to the other, the evolution both of Type and
Individual receives a check.
And because the evolution of Type is achieved by the Germ-plasm derived
from a parent of one sex obtaining new increment from being invested in
the organisation of offspring of the opposite sex, it is not until the
new Typal-inherence of this Germ-plasm is revivified again in the
organisation of a member of the Sex from which the plasm was derived,
that such new impulse manifests. Hence the phenomenon of characteristics
being transmitted from parents to offspring of opposite sex. So that
daughters of normal womanly organisation reproduce the Typal
characteristics of their fathers' maternal line; while in sons of normal
male organisation those of their mothers' paternal line emerge.
Hence too, the reversion of offspring of hybrid plants to the
types,--pure Dominant and pure Recessive--of their grandparents.
IV
_Progressive segregation of Male and Female traits in opposite
sides of body ever further intensifies and differentiates their
intrinsic qualities_
The biological constitution of humans and of the other higher organisms
differentiating them into two opposite symmetrical sides, in which, as
development rises higher in the scale, the Dominance, or Maleness, in
them is ever further and more perfectly segregated from the
Recessiveness, or Femaleness, in them, secures the progressive
intensification, respectively, of Maleness or of Femaleness in them, by
ever further ranging the factors, or traits, of these on opposite sides
of the biological equation; and by thus more effectively centralising
the powers, according to sex, in one or the other side thereof.
Mendel's peas, not thus differentiated into two sides, are bi-sexual and
self-fertilising. Of the original stock, that order in which Dominant
traits are prepotent is differentiating toward a male _genus_, however.
While the Recessives are differentiating toward a female _genus_.
Although regarded as "pure" Dominants and "pure" Recessives, they are
nevertheless hybrids in respect of Sex. Being self-fertilising, both
Dominants and Recessives are of low power, alike for reproduction and
development. Because the Dominance, or Male developmental power, of the
Recessives being inhibited by the Recessiveness, or Femaleness, in them,
is of low Vigour. While the Recessiveness, or Female vital power in the
Dominants being unduly expended by the Dominance, or Maleness, in them,
is of low Vitality. The male sex-cells of the self-fertilising Dominants
thus fertilise female sex-cells of low vitality. While the female
sex-cells of the self-fertilising Recessives are fertilised by male
sex-cells of low vigour.
In cross-breeding, the conditions cease not only to be those of
self-fertilising, but they cease, moreover, to be those of the
close inbreeding of self-fertilisation. In the "hybrids" obtained
by crossing the higher-vigoured male sex-cells of the "pure"
Dominants with the higher-vitalised female sex-cells of the "pure"
Recessives, the Dominants--because Dominance is prepotent for exterior
characteristics--submerge the external traits of the Recessives, which
are prepotent for vital and internal functioning. Such Dominants are a
bi-sexual species in which the male is prepotent. And to be male, means
that they have expended, in terms of structural development, a great
proportion of the female Vital power inherent in them; thus masking the
Recessive female traits in them, as regards exterior characteristics.
But since reproductive power inheres in these Recessive traits, these
traits are preserved in the sex-cells, equally with the Dominant traits.
The plants being not only bi-sexual, but self-fertilising also, the
sex-cells must obviously be bi-sexual too; in order to provide the
organism with factors both of life and development. Every sex-cell is a
hybrid cell, therefore; bearing both Dominant and Recessive traits. But,
like their parents, in some, the Dominant, in others, the Recessive
traits are prepotent. And the Dominant sex-cells mating with Dominants,
the Recessives with Recessives, the original types of so-called "pure"
Dominants and "pure" Recessives reappear in the third generation.
V
_Self-fertilising organism is a female organism with a male
organism differentiated in it_
Because the female represents the Life-potential of species and the
Vital potential of organisms, a self-fertilising plant or creature must
be regarded as a female organism, with a male organism of Adaptation, or
Differentiation, developed in it. This male organism energises both its
developmental and its functioning power, and fertilises it; although the
_potential_ of structure, of growth, of function and of reproduction are
engendered in the female organism. The female is the root-stock or
parent-stem of all species, therefore.
If Dominance is Maleness, and Recessiveness is Femaleness, and if
Dominance energises structural development while Recessiveness engenders
reproduction, a Dominant self-fertilising plant is a female plant, with
a male plant of superior Dominance differentiated in it. While a
Recessive self-fertilising plant is a female plant of superior
Recessiveness, with a male plant of inferior Dominance differentiated in
it. In crossing stock of superior Dominance with stock of superior
Recessiveness, the Dominant prevails over the Recessive in the general
structural traits of the resulting "hybrid," but not in its reproductive
inherence. The new hybrids being male in inherence, nothing is added to
the female reproductive, or Vital, potential in them. The root-stock
transmits to its sex-cells therefore just as its grandmother
did--Recessives of her type, and Dominants of the type of the Dominant
male engrafted on her, of the male grandfather of this third
generation, that is. Hence reversion.
VI
_Sterility of offspring of alien species proves evolution of
Species and of Individual are independent phenomena_
The fact that dog and wolf, when mated, breed fertile species, proves
them sprung from the same root-stock. While the hybrid offspring of
different species are sterile. Showing such an intrinsic incompatability
of the alien complements in the zygote as, while operating as no bar to
their immediate union and their development into a complete hybrid
individual, nevertheless bars the incorporation of the alien breed in
the Vital potential of stock.
Such sterility in the offspring of creatures of different species is
weighty evidence that the Evolution of Type, or Species, and the
Evolution of the Individual are wholly independent phenomena; occurring
upon wholly different planes, and involving wholly different principles
and sets of processes. In the mating of alien species, the two
sex-cells, although of dissimilar species-inherence, unite nevertheless
and develop in the maternal environment into a living entity of mongrel
order. But the Germ-plasm contained in the gamete of one species will
not germinate in the alien environment of an organism of alien species.
No potential, either Vital or of Differentiation, is engendered,
therefore, for production of offspring. Hence sterility results. The
potential of a living individual is seen thus to belong to a wholly
different plane of phenomena from the potential of Stock. Conditions
which do not annul the powers of life and of function in the one, quench
life and function in the other with the seal of sterility.
VII
_Possible explanation of "Sports"_
Mr. Regnart says: "We often meet with Sports. Second- and third-rate
parents may produce an exceptionally fine individual, but such animals
are always failures to breed from. The law of Filial Regression comes
into operation. Our aim is to find families that have produced a large
number of fine animals--we know then that we are on safe ground."
In these cases, it would seem that the "fine individual" results from so
singularly harmonious and successful a complementing and fructifying of
the parental halves in offspring as conduce to develop the best points
of both; doubtless, too, to eliminate or to annul weak or faulty factors
of either parental strain. Neither of such inferior-grade parents
transmitting a fine _lineal_ potential, however, the exceptional
fineness of the individual is not inherent in the Germ-plasm he or she
transmits to offspring. The fine characteristics of such "Sports" are
not transmissible, therefore, to descendants.
Proof again of two planes of Life and Evolution, that of Species and
that of the Individual. Moral, too, of the importance of fine selection
in mating, since the harmonious mating of second- or third-rate parents
may produce finer offspring than are born of ill-assorted matings of two
finer breeds of parent.
The case is recorded of a pony about the size of a Shetland pony, which
was the offspring of pedigree Shire-parents on both sides, _both parents
being over 17 hands_. The most striking feature about the animal was
that there was nothing of the _horse_-type about him--he was a perfect
example of _pony_.
Shire horses are typical examples of Vigour, or developmental power,
expressed in terms of stature, muscle and nervous energy. And for so
long as the breeding for these characteristics was supplemented in terms
of vital organs and vital functioning, by an equivalent maternal
complement of Vital potential, to sustain the constitutional expenditure
involved in stature, muscular equipment, and nervous energy, the breed
improved in these particulars. Pushed beyond this limit, by introducing
into stock further strains of Vigour, or developmental initiative,
without simultaneously providing the indispensable equivalents of these
in increasing Vital potentials, all at once the balance toppled, and
reversion to inferior type resulted.
An excessive proportion of the Vital power of these two Pedigree Shires
of great stature and great strength had been expended in the
achievement of such great stature and great strength, and in the
equipment of digestive and assimilative organs required to sustain
these. But little had remained, accordingly, for Reproductive
investments. Hence reversion in the de-vitalised stock.
One conceives of the counterpoise in Stock, of Male and Female
complements, as being akin to that of the opposite and complementary
curves of an arch. So long as equipoise is sustained by the perfect
balance of the contrary curves, so long each re-inforces the other to
support a heavy superstructure of development. Lopsidedness of either
curve leads to collapse.
VIII
_Vigour is Male. Vitability is Female_
"Vigour," which breeders regard as a potent factor in heredity, is
commonly confounded with Vital Power, or Vitability; although the two
would seem to be diametrically opposite in cause, in nature and effect.
An athlete, in so-called "condition," is in the prime of Vigour; his
muscular and nervous powers being at high levels of structure and of
functioning. His Vital powers are proportionally at low ebb, however; as
is proved by his notable lack of recuperative power in illness. He is
bad subject, indeed, in respect of progress and recovery from disease.
Feeble-minded persons possess but little Vigour of brain or of body, yet
their Vital power, as shown in healthy organic functioning and
vitativeness, is often extraordinary. Vigour is an expression of nervous
energy, and is generated by the brain. Vitability is Life-power, and
results from vital organs efficient both in structure and in processes.
It is engendered in the Reproductive System; which may be regarded as
the power-house of Life and vital function.
_Vigour_ is the power of Differentiation, or Individuation, of an
organism, structural and functional, physical and mental, in terms of
its relation to environment. _Vitability_ is the intensification of the
individualism and of the functioning of an organism in terms of
Life-power.
Vigour, being katabolic, a male and a Dominant trait, manifests in man
(as in plants) as Tallness, or the expenditure of vital energy upon the
material plane, in growth and stature; as too in functional initiative
and activity, both physical and mental, on the material plane.
Vitability, being anabolic, a female and a Recessive trait, manifests as
Dwarfness, or the conservation of vital energy upon the material plane,
in respect of growth and stature; as too in weakness, or inhibition of
vigour and activity, both physical and mental.
The male trait of Vigour makes men larger, stronger, hardier, and more
resistant to disease than women are. The female trait of Vitability
makes women healthier, more charged with vital power and temperament,
more recuperative from disease, and longer-lived than men. The
complementary inherences of Vigour and Vitability, derived respectively
from the two parents, and supplementing one another in offspring, endow
him or her with fine form and structure, healthy vital organs and
efficient function, power of Life and nervous energy.
In the normal male, Vigour dominates Vitability; the maternal potential
of Vitability being differentiated in him into its male equivalent.
While in the normal female, Vigour recedes within the Female traits of
vital power and healthy functioning, endurance and womanly faculty.
The opposite modes of Vigour and Vitality are well shown in disease. In
vigorous men, disease may assume the type known as "sthenic";
occasioning such violent re-activity, or rebellion, of the system, and
such consequent severity of symptoms as speedily exhaust the resources,
and tend to fatal ending. While Vital power, being anabolic and
conservative, meets the foe passively, and instead of wasting,
economises the forces by moderation of symptoms; bending to the course
and processes of sickness, and making thereby for recovery. Because of
the lesser vitability of their cells, disease in men tends toward
structural, or organic deteriorations. While disease in normal women is
more often functional, merely.
In masculine women, disease is prone, as in men, to structural
degenerations. Masculine women are very liable to cancer; a liability
they transmit as heritage to offspring of both sexes. Hence the
increasing masculinity of latter-day women has entailed upon the race an
increased liability to cancer and to other structural degeneration. This
liability has assumed such grave proportions as to occur in children
even, showing in the abnormal growths, "adenoids" now so prevalent as to
have become "the normal" of modern childhood.
IX
_The living body is a highly-vitalised Vegetative organism with a
highly-specialised Cerebro-nervous organism differentiated in it_
Professor Cuvier said, "The nervous system is, at bottom, the whole
animal; the other systems are there only to serve it."
Professor Bergson amplifies the statement:
"A higher organism is essentially a sensori-motor system installed on
systems of digestion, respiration, circulation, secretion, etc., whose
function it is to repair, cleanse and protect it, to create an
unvarying, internal environment for it, and above all to produce its
potential energy for conversion into locomotive movement."
In both statements, is recognition of the Dual differentiation of the
body into an organism of Life which functions in relation to its own
intrinsic being, and an organism of Consciousness which functions in
relation to exterior environment. That in death from starvation, the
brain and the nerves remain almost unimpaired, while all the other
organs and tissues lose weight, their cells undergoing profound
degenerative changes, is further indication of two distinct and separate
departments of development and processes in every animal existence.
As in its Mendelian phenomena of the Segregation of its Contrasting
Traits, and the Dominance and Recessiveness of these in constitution and
heredity, so, in its living organisation, the human body is
extraordinarily and in a number of ways essentially plant-like. The
brain and the nervous system may be regarded, indeed, as a
highly-differentiated Cerebro-Nervous organism grafted upon a simpler
Vital, and vegetative body, from which, as from a soil, it draws its
life and energy: and from which, as age advances, it gradually withdraws
the power of further sustaining its existence.
This Cerebro-Nervous graft perishes only because the Vegetative body on
which it is installed has come to the end of its power to sustain the
life of the Nervous organism picketed upon it.
The close resemblances in structure and in processes between the Cells
of vegetable and animal organisms, when taken in conjunction with a
number of other biological indications, justify the conclusion that
living bodies are actually vegetative organisms to which have been
super-added, by progressive evolutionary differentiations, faculties of
Motion and of Consciousness.
(Plants are recognised as possessing rudimentary consciousness. While
Growth is a mode of Motion.)
The trunk, which contains the respiratory, circulatory, nutritive and
reproductive organs represents the Vitative, or Vegetative, system. The
brain with its tributary spinal cord and spinal-nervous system
represents the Sensori-motor organism. While the limbs are
highly-differentiated implements which the Cerebro-Nervous organism has
developed in the Vitative organism; to serve it with means of locomotion
and of action, for the achievement of intelligent purpose.
The lungs, with their ramifications of tubes and their air-cells,
closely resemble the branches and leaves of a tree, which spread into
and absorb from the atmosphere the oxygen whereby it lives. While the
convoluted intestines are like the roots of a tree, absorbing nurture
for it from environment.
The Vegetative organism, being the agency of Life, is female in origin
and inherence.
The Cerebro-spinal organism, being the agency of Adaptation, is male in
origin and inherence. In both, however, the inherences of the other sex
are represented.
The body resembles thus a bi-sexual plant, its root-stock being female
and Recessive, with a male Dominant and differentiating organism
incorporated in it.
X
_Vegetative body has its own brain and nervous system and its
(involuntary) muscles_
This Vegetative body has its own separate (organic) brain, in the Solar
Plexus--or "Abdominal brain"--and its nervous system, in the intricate
"Sympathetic" system of nerves; which, in addition to administering the
nutrition of the body, is intimately and closely associated, in
psychology, with the brain and with the spinal-nervous system of the
Psychical organism. Itself subconscious, this organic brain nevertheless
contributes vital impulse and colour to Consciousness.
It possesses also its own specialised system of muscles, the
"Involuntary muscles"; which are not under control of the conscious
brain and will, but operate automatically--by so-called reflex action.
The motions they subtend are concerned with vital functions; nutrition,
respiration, circulation, assimilation, elimination, reproduction.
The Vitative organism, being vegetative of growth and passive of mode,
needs rest and sun and wind and air and water for its nurture and
development. With that rising of the sap in the world of vegetation
which occurs in spring, kindred processes occur within the human
vegetative body. It responds to the re-creative forces of its
mother-earth.
With every recurring Spring-tide, youth turns again to thoughts of love,
because of this natural renaissance of its vitative resources, for
purposes of re-creation--both of Cells and individuals.
Old age is a permanent winter of this plant-body. Summer suns revive but
little more than flickerings of its vegetative pulsings. Although the
psychical life, intellectual and nervous, may be still vigorous, the sap
of the plant-body no longer rises, quick and warm and fructifying, to
earth's perennial call.
This plant-like body with its plant-like fruiting Cells, it is, that
when charged with the graces and magnetic potences of health and high
nurture, supplies the pleasing personality found not seldom in sinners,
while often conspicuously lacking in saints--a seeming anomaly which
has gone far to discredit the virtues.
By way of it, human personality resembles a mystical flowering plant
that breathes and feels and moves; and a fruiting plant that reproduces.
The Cerebro-Nervous system animates and intelligises this beautiful
vessel of flesh wherein it subsists.
The vigour of its Vegetative stock, supplementing brain and nervous
system by fine structure, fine stature, organic vigour, native faculty,
and reproductive power, has given the Anglo-Saxon race its world-wide
rule. It is to this that its women have owed their shapely frames, their
healthful constitutions and their loveliness; the warm tints of hair and
skin, the fresh and flower-like complexions, and the fruit-like form and
bloom of cheek for which they once were famed.
Rich personal charm and sweetness of healthful condition which are all
too swiftly passing from our modern women, hag-ridden by a strenuousness
that is wrecking the flower-body, with its vital joy and warmth, its
grace of being and its bliss of sense, its temperamental thrill and
colour.
* * * * *
The doctrine of Evolution is signally incomplete unless we realise it as
a sequence of progressive developments, direct and without intermission,
from the simplest forms of Elemental Matter to the highest, living
orders of Creation--Mineral, Vegetable, Brute and Human being
progressive stages in the evolution of Life and of Consciousness; graded
by links so subtly and infinitesimally constituted as to belong equally
to the kingdom below and to that above them.
The subject appears full of interest and suggestion, showing all the
planes of Nature, from mineral to man, linked in an unbroken line by way
of this half-vegetable body of flesh, with its roots in earth and its
branches in Consciousness. No more than this briefest of mentions can be
given here, however.
XI
_Mysterious "Internal Secretions"_
Biologists tell of Dual planes of operation in the processes of every
organ of the body. Because some of these function on the external plane,
in visible secretions or in other ways calculable by scientific methods,
and they function, too, upon an Inner and occulted, plane; in the form
of mysterious "Internal Secretions," the mode and nature whereof have
long baffled and eluded the most intricate scientific appliances and
intellections.
What is indicated if not an Inner, and Potential, plane of Life
and vital processes--a _plane of Involution_, or Recession
(centripetal)--whereon factors of environment, air, food, water and so
forth are transformed by vital involutionary processes, into
_potentials_ of living form and function? Which potentials remain
latent, or Recessive, in the cells and glands secreting them, and
available for transformation by evolutionary processes, into actualities
of physical form and function on the Outer (centrifugal) plane of
Life--the _plane of Evolution_.
And Life and health, together with normality of faculty and function,
depend upon the perfect balance and co-ordination of these two contrary
orders of factors and processes, which, I assume, are engendered,
respectively, in the Male and the Female departments of living organisms
of both sexes.
All the vital functions--Respiration, Circulation, Digestion,
Reproduction--may be classed as Recessive functions, because they are
characterised by a Recession, or withdrawal, from the Without to the
Within. This is a phenomenon of the _Involution_ of Environment, for
transformation thereof into potential Life, and potential Evolutionary
output.
_Death_ is a centripetal withdrawal of the soul from the material
Without to an Inner zone of Spiritual, or Potential, Being. And in due
time, analogy assures us, having assimilated and transformed the
resultant of a terrestrial existence into a new potential of Life, Life
issues forth again, by the centrifugal impulse of re-Birth, to
differentiate itself once more in living form upon the Outer plane.
(_Re-incarnation_ is, obviously, the true interpretation of
_Resurrection of the body_, which otherwise is scientifically
impossible.)
Winter withdrawal, or Involution, of the sap of Vegetation from the
outer plane of functioning to the inner plane of potential Life, whereby
it derives such new increment of Vital potential as, with the outgoing
of sap again in the renaissance of spring, evolves in increased growth
and new foliage, is further example of the principle and processes of
Dominance and Recessiveness--of the female Vital impulse and the male
Developmental impetus, operating in an eternal tidal rhythm of ebb and
flow.
XII
_Dual planes of Mentality: Outer and Material, Inner and Occult_
As in the Domain of Life and vital processes, so in the Domain of
Consciousness and nervous processes, there are two planes of function;
an Inner and occulted plane of Mind, or potential Consciousness, and an
Outer plane of material Consciousness; representing respectively
afferent (or centripetal) and efferent (or outgoing) nervous currents.
Faculty and sense may be regarded as having developed in one direction
along lines of the telescope, with increasing capability to horizon the
Without; while they have developed simultaneously along lines of the
microscope, to reveal an Invisible Within.
The Senses, which adapt man's Consciousness to environment by the
functions of Sight, Hearing, Touch, Taste, Smell, have become, with
evolutionary development, so increasingly sensitised in response to The
Without as ever further to have set him in rapport with the world
exterior. While, at the same time, so have they become sensitised in
response to The Within, as ever further to have deepened and quickened
his apprehension of an occulted Interior plane. Faculty has acquired
thus, simultaneously with its increasing power of focusing the Outer and
Objective, an increasing power so to invert its focus as to penetrate
ever more deeply into the Inner and Subjective, alike of man's own
constitution and that of environment.
These two contrary, but co-operative, modes of mentality are,
respectively, Intellection and Intuition--Male and Female modes of mind.
XIII
_Differentiation of the Zygote, or Mated Sex-cell_
I have described, throughout, the right side of the human body as the
male-side--that in which the Male-traits of Humanity are specialised in
the individual; the left as the woman-side, that in which the
Woman-traits of Humanity are centred.
But the modes of constitution, as of inheritance, are more complex, of
course, than that one parent supplies the potential of one side, the
other parent that of the other side.
As regards inheritance, the maternal ovum comprises, I believe, the
potential of the whole body, with the exception of the brain, the
spinal-cord and the spinal nerves. But because the mother is descended
from parents of both sex, and possesses, therefore, both Male and Female
elements, the ovum must contain (as must every other cell) both male and
female factors. These, it is conceivable, are grouped, by contrary
polarities, into two areas, or hemispheres; an upper and a lower. Of
these the upper is Male in inherency. It comprises the potentials of
shoulders and spinal column which are fulcra of action, and of lungs and
heart which are the _energising_ organs of Life. The lower hemisphere of
the ovum is Female in inherency. It comprises the potentials of the
pelvis, which is the cradle of Maternity, of the reproductive organs,
which engender Life and the emotions, and of the digestive and
assimilative organs, which engender vital processes.
So too, because the male parent is likewise descended from parents of
opposite sex, his contribution to offspring must also contain both male
and female factors. But while the mother supplies, in the ovum, the
potential of the whole body--face and head, trunk, limbs and vital
organs, the father contributes the potential of the brain, the spinal
cord and the spinal nerves only, which adapt the organism, by way of
form and Consciousness, to environment. The limbs, which adapt it, by
way of Motion, to environment, may be regarded as differentiations
primarily of the brain and nervous system.
The ovum is spheroidal; the sperm-cell rectilinear (following the rule
that the line of Maleness is a straight one; that of Femaleness, a
curve). And as in the spheroidal ovum, the factors of the opposite
sexes, grouped into two areas, separate it into hemispheres of opposite
sex-inherency, so in the rectilinear sperm-cell, we may surmise the
factors of the two sexes to be grouped lengthwise, and to separate it
thus into a male side and a female side. Such a sperm-cell penetrating
the ovum, and developing laterally, further differentiates this into
anterior, posterior and lateral areas. The two lateral developments of
this potential brain and spinal cord and nerves eventually constitute
the right and the left brain-hemispheres, and differentiate the body
into right and left sides.
The left brain-hemisphere, with its half of the spinal cord and nerves,
is derived from the _male_ side of the sperm-cell; while the right
brain-hemisphere, with its half of the spinal cord and spinal nerves, is
derived from the _female_ side (by inheritance) of the sperm cell.
Weismann describes the Germ-Plasm as being transmitted in the female
line solely, from ovum of mother to that of daughter.
This supports the above view; namely, that the Germ-Plasm proper is
inherent in the ovum, in which it exists in potential, or
undifferentiated, form, and that it becomes differentiated (in both
sexes) into a right and a left-reproductive gland of contrary
sex-inherence, by differentiative power of the dual-sexed sperm-cell.
The re-polarisation of the fertilised ovum, which is visible beneath the
microscope, would seem to represent this differentiative process.
Since the microcosm is as the macrocosm, the Dual constitution must be
repeated in every living cell of the body; the cell-plasma representing
the vegetative system, the cell-nucleus representing the cerebro-nervous
system. Possibly the nucleolus is the Supra- and Subconscious element.
XIV
_Inorganic Matter is Dual and Hermaphrodite. Life breaks up this
Neuter counterpoise, and progressively unlocks and segregates, and
thus reveals and specialises the inherent attributes of Sex_
Phenomena of Duality characterise not Living Matter only, but Inorganic
Matter too. The elemental atom is never found manifesting singly, but
always as two atoms coupled together, in the form of "the molecule";
these mated atoms being of opposite electrical potential.
And since Living Matter has evolved out of Inorganic Matter--what is to
be inferred but that the duality of the living cell is the evolution, on
the plane of Life, of the duality of the chemical molecule?
Further, that the duality of living forms in terms of
sex-characteristics is the evolution, on the plane of Living Faculty, of
the duality alike of the living cell and of the chemical molecule; the
two sexes representing, respectively, the contrary inherences of all
these dualities, specialised and ever further intensifying in the
contrary trends of the opposite Sex-traits of Male and Female.
The elemental molecule is seen thus to be hybrid, or hermaphrodite, in
constitution, precisely as the living cell and the living body are.
While that both living cells and inorganic crystals reproduce, proves
factors of Sex differentiated and functioning in them.
The inertia of Matter is due to the hermaphrodite state; its contrary
Sex-impulses interlocking and nullifying one another. Life breaks up
this neuter state of equipoise, by increasingly segregating the
dual-sex-inherences and evolving each along its own intrinsic trend;
thereby engendering between their dual factors fructifying
interoperations which result in the motions of Growth and other vital
processes.
Growth is a phenomenon of Reproduction. Living cells increase their
substance by germination of their bi-sexual elements. Attaining
maturity, a cell divides into two cells, each of which by way of similar
processes develops into a mature cell.
And since for all Change, two (or more) contrary impulses are
necessary, and since Reproduction is a function of Sex, what is to be
inferred but that Evolution and Growth and all other phenomena of living
cells result from oppositions, co-operations and correlations of the
contrary impetus and processes of two orders of sex-factors present
therein? By way alone of their bi-sexuality, are cells, both animal and
vegetable, able to reproduce the cell-offspring required by living
organisms for processes of growth, of function and repair.
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WOMAN AND MARRIAGE
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CONTENTS
HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY pages 1 to 8
TRAVEL & DESCRIPTION " 8 " 9
POLITICS, SOCIOLOGY & ECONOMICS " 10 " 13
BELLES LETTRES " 14 " 16
POETRY AND DRAMA " 17
MISCELLANEOUS " 18
FICTION " 19 to 21
NEW EDITIONS AND IMPRESSIONS " 22 " 27
Life and Letters of Silvanus Phillips Thompson, F.R.S. By JANE S.
THOMPSON and HELEN G. THOMPSON. Illustrated. Demy 8vo, cloth.
(Spring, 1920).
21s. 0d. NET Inland Postage, 6d.
This is a straightforward and somewhat intimate account of the career of
a man of great and varied gifts. Born into the family of a simple Quaker
schoolmaster of York his extraordinary energy and devotion to science
carried him into the foremost ranks of physicists, an acknowledged
leader in electro-technology and optics. Both as popular lecturer and as
trainer of technical college students his skill was unrivalled, and
wheresoever he went his enthusiasm for men and things won him
friendships, alike in his own country and abroad. Many of the letters
describe experiences on his journeys, others adventures of the
antiquarian in the pursuit of sixteenth and seventeenth century
scientific literature, and yet others tell of battles for truth in some
field or other.
The book contains appreciations of his works as original investigator,
teacher, writer, artist, and "prophet," and indirectly testifies to the
warmth of personal regard which the frank geniality of his nature won
for him in many spheres.
All and Sundry: More Uncensored Celebrities. By E. T. RAYMOND,
Author of "Uncensored Celebrities." Demy 8vo, cloth.
10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.
Few books this year have attracted more attention or been more widely
read than Mr. E. T. Raymond's "Uncensored Celebrities," a work as
caustic as it was impartial. In his new work Mr. Raymond does not limit
himself to political personalities only, but includes figures in the
Church, such as the Bishop of London and Dean Inge; in literature, Mr.
G. K. Chesterton, Mr. Hilaire Belloc, and Mr. Rudyard Kipling; in
journalism, Mr. Harold Begbie, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, and Mr. Leo Maxse; in
art and music, Mr. Frank Brangwyn and Sir Thomas Beecham. Mr. Raymond
includes also character sketches of President Wilson, M. Georges
Clemenceau, the Duke of Somerset, Viscount Chaplin, Viscount Esher, Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Ernle, Mr. Speaker, and many other prominent
people. Wider in range than "Uncensored Celebrities" and equally
brilliant, this work may be expected to appeal to even a larger public
than its remarkable predecessor.
The Life of John Payne. By THOMAS WRIGHT, Author of "The Life of
William Cowper," etc. With 18 Illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth.
28s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.
Few great authors appeal more to the imagination than John Payne, the
hero of "The John Payne Society," who shrank from the lime-light of
"interviewing." Recognised as a true poet by Swinburne, he was probably
the most skilful translator of the nineteenth century, for we owe to him
a version of Villon's poems which is itself a poetic work of consummate
art, the first complete translation of the "Arabian Nights," the first
complete verse rendering of Omar Khayyam's quatrains, to say nothing of
translations of "The Decameron," etc. Among his friends were Swinburne,
Sir Richard Burton, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Arthur O'Shaughnessy, French
authors such as Victor Hugo, Banville, and Mallarmé, and the artist who
ventured to depict "God with eyes turned inward upon His own glory." Mr.
Wright by an extraordinary exercise of tact and sympathy was able to
pass the barrier which shut Payne off from anybody who sought to know
the man behind the books. For twelve years before Payne's death in 1916
he was his most intimate friend, and as, during all that time, he had in
view the writing of Payne's Life he lost next to none of his
opportunities for obtaining at first hand the facts and opinions needed
for his work. Moreover, Payne made him a present of a MS. autobiography
and supplied him with valuable material from his letter-files. Mr.
Wright was, in fact, Payne's Boswell, and no life which may be written
hereafter can have the weight and interest of this vivid book, much of
which gives us the sound of Payne's own voice.
A History of Modern Colloquial English. By HENRY CECIL WYLD, B.
Litt. (Oxon.), Baines Professor of English Language and Philology
at the University of Liverpool. Demy 8vo, cloth. (Spring, 1920.)
21s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.
The book deals more particularly with the changes that have taken place
during the last five hundred years in the spoken forms of English. The
development of English pronunciation and the changes in grammatical
usage are dealt with in considerable detail, and there is a chapter on
idiomatic colloquialisms, modes of greeting, forms of address in
society, conventional and individual methods of beginning and ending
private letters, expletives, etc. The main part of the book is based
almost entirely upon new material collected from the prose and poetical
literature, and also from Letters, Diaries and Wills written during the
five centuries following the death of Chaucer. A sketch is given of the
chief peculiarities of the English dialects from about 1150, to the end
of the 14th century, and special chapters are devoted to a general
account of the languages of the 15th, 16th, and 17th and 18th centuries
respectively. Many questions of general interest are dealt with, such as
the rise of a common literary form of English, and its relation to the
various spoken dialects; the recognition of a standard form of spoken
English, and its variations from age to age, and among different social
classes. The various types of English are illustrated by copious
examples from the writings of all the periods under consideration. This
will be a work of much interest for the intelligent general reader as
well as for the scholar. Professor Wyld is the author of many well-known
and widely read books of which this ought to prove not the least
popular.
Zanzibar: Past and Present. By MAJOR FRANCIS B. PEARCE, C.M.G.
(British Resident in Zanzibar), With a Map and 32 pages
Illustrations. Super Royal 8vo, cloth. (Spring, 1920.)
30s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.
This important work deals with the past and present history of Zanzibar.
From the earliest times this island, owing to its commanding position
off the coast of Africa, controlled the great trade-routes which
traversed the Continent from the Indian to the Atlantic Oceans, and it
has remained to the present day the Metropolis of the East African
Region. It has known many over-lords, and the author, who is His
Majesty's Representative in Zanzibar, traces the story of this romantic
island-kingdom down the centuries. The close association of this African
island with ancient and mediæval Arabia is demonstrated, and the advent
of the old Persian colonists to its shores explained. Coming to later
times such names as Vasco da Gama and Sir James Lancaster, that famous
Elizabethan sea-captain, are met with; until leaving beaten tracks, the
author introduces the reader to the hoary kingdom of Oman, whence came
those princes of the Arabian desert, who subdued to their sway the rich
spice-island of Zanzibar, and the adjacent territories of Central
Africa. Modern Zanzibar is fully dealt with, and the enlightened Prince
who occupies the throne of Zanzibar to-day is introduced to the reader
in a personal interview. The latter portion of the work is devoted to
descriptions of the ruined Arab and Persian stone-built towns--the very
names of which are now forgotten--which until cleared by the author, lay
mouldering in the forests of Zanzibar and Pemba. The text is elucidated
by a series of beautiful photographs and by specially prepared maps.
This volume must be regarded as the standard work on the Sultanate of
Zanzibar.
The Canadians in France, 1915-1918 By CAPT. HARWOOD STEELE, M.C.,
late Headquarters Staff, 2nd Canadian Division. With Maps. Demy
8vo. (Spring, 1920.)
21s. 0d. NET.
Captain Steele, who is already favourably known as the author of the
spirited volume of poems entitled "Cleared for Action," here recounts
the deeds of the famous force sent by Canada to take part in the Great
War. What St. Julien, Ypres, St. Eloi, the Somme, Passchaendaele, Lens,
Vimy, Amiens, Cambrai and Mons, 1918 mean in the glorious record of the
Allies will be fully understood by the reader of this book.
This is the first complete record of the achievements of the Canadian
divisions to be published. Captain Steele served three years in France,
and participated in most of the important engagements in which the
Canadians took part.
Drake, Nelson and Napoleon: Studies. By SIR WALTER RUNCIMAN, Bart.,
Author of "The Tragedy of St. Helena," etc. Illustrated. Demy 8vo,
cloth.
12s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d.
In this work Sir Walter Runciman deals first with Drake and what he
calls the Fleet Tradition, of which he regards Drake, the greatest
Elizabethan sailor, as the indubitable founder; next the author deals at
considerable length with Nelson, his relations with Lady Hamilton, and
the various heroic achievements which have immortalised his name. From
Nelson the author passes on to Napoleon, and shows how his career and
policy have had a vital relation to the World War. As himself a sailor
of the old wooden-ships period, Sir Walter is able to handle with
special knowledge and intimacy the technique of the seafaring exploits
of Nelson; and Sir Walter's analysis of the character of Nelson, a
combination of vanity, childishness, statesmanlike ability, and
incomparable seamanship and courage, is singularly well conceived.
Bolingbroke and Walpole. By the Rt. Hon. J. M. ROBERTSON, Author of
"Shakespeare and Chapman," "The Economics of Progress," etc., etc.
Demy 8vo, cloth.
12s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d.
Many years ago, in his "Introduction to English Politics" (recast as
"The Evolution of States"), Mr. Robertson proposed to continue that
survey in a series of studies of the leading English politicians, from
Bolingbroke to Gladstone. Taking up the long suspended plan, he has now
produced a volume on the two leading statesmen of an important period,
approaching its problems through their respective actions. The aim is to
present political history at once in its national and its personal
aspects, treating the personalities of politicians as important forces,
but studying at the same time the whole intellectual environment. A
special feature of the volume intended to be developed in those which
may follow is a long chapter in "The Social Evolution," setting forth
the nation's progress, from generation to generation, in commerce,
industry, morals, education, literature, art, science, and well-being.
Seen from a Railway Platform. By WILLIAM VINCENT. Crown 8vo, cloth.
(Spring, 1920.)
3s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.
Mr. Vincent must from his early years have cultivated his faculty of
observation, and he has a marvellous memory for what he has seen or
heard. His recollections start from the early 'sixties, when, as a boy,
he got a situation as bookstall clerk, from which position he rose to be
bookstall manager in various parts of the country. His experiences as
bookstall manager on a railway platform, with its continuously shifting
crowds and contacts with various idiosyncracies, are highly interesting,
but he recalls many events that have happened in his time away from the
bookstall, the notorious Heenan fight, the remarkable exhibition of the
"Great Eastern" and others. He gives curious accounts of the early
railway carriages, the treatment of the third-class passenger and much
other lore concerning railway travel in the now distant days.
Altogether, Mr. Vincent has produced a valuable volume of reminiscences.
Life of Liza Lehmann. By Herself. With a Coloured Frontispiece and
16 pp. Illustrations. Large Crown 8vo, cloth.
10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.
Shortly before her death, Madame Liza Lehmann completed a volume of
Reminiscences. A charming and gifted woman her life was spent in
artistic and literary surroundings. She was the daughter of an artist,
Rudolf Lehmann, the wife of another, Herbert Bedford, one of her sisters
being Mrs. Barry Pain, and her cousins including Muriel Ménie Dowie
("The Girl in the Carpathians") and Mr. R. C. Lehmann, of "Punch." Her
memories include a dinner with Verdi, conversations with Jenny Lind,
anecdotes of Edward VII, Brahms, Mme. Clara Butt, and other celebrities.
As the composer of "A Persian Garden," she became world-renowned, and
her self-revelation is not less interesting than her tit-bits about
other artists.
Men and Manner in Parliament. By SIR HENRY LUCY. With a
Biographical Note and about 32 Illustrations. Large Crown 8vo.
10s. 6d. NET Inland Postage, 6d.
As "Member for the Chiltern Hundreds" Sir Henry Lucy published an
interesting volume on the Parliament of 1874. The book has been long out
of print, but it again came "on the tapis" as it seemed to the publisher
so thoroughly worth bringing to life again. It is recorded in the
authorised Life of President Wilson that study of the articles on their
original publication in the "Gentleman's Magazine" directed his career
into the field of politics. He wrote to the author apropos this book: "I
shall always think of you as one of my instructors." The book is
essentially a connected series of character-sketches written in the
well-known witty manner of the famous _Punch_ diarist. Gladstone,
"Dizzy," Dilke, Bright, Auberon Herbert, Roebuck, Sir Stafford
Northcote, etc., are some of the leading figures, and lesser-known
M.P.'s resume a vigorous vitality, thanks to Sir Henry's magic pen.
Anglo-American Relations, 1861-1865. By BROUGHAM VILLIERS & W. H.
CHESSON. Large Crown 8vo, cloth.
10s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d.
This book deals with the causes of friction and misunderstandings
between Great Britain and the United States during the trying years of
the Civil War. The reasons which, for a time, gave prominence to the
Southern sympathies of the British ruling classes, while rendering
almost inarticulate the far deeper feeling for the Cause of Union and
Emancipation among the masses of our people, are examined and explained.
Such dramatic incidents as the Trent affair, the launching of the
"Alabama," and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation are dealt with from
the point of view of their effect upon opinion in this country as
illustrated by contemporary correspondence and literature. Interesting
facts, now almost forgotten, of the movements inaugurated by the English
friends of the North to explain to our people the true issues at stake
in the conflict are reproduced, and an attempt is made to estimate the
influence of the controversies of the time on the subsequent relations
of the English-speaking peoples.
Mr. W. H. Chesson, grandson of George Thompson, the anti-slavery orator,
who was William Lloyd Garrison's bosom friend, contributes a chapter
which attempts to convey an impression of the influence of Transatlantic
problems upon English oratory and the writings of public men.
Woodrow Wilson: An interpretation. By A. MAURICE LOW, Author of
"The American People: A Study in National Psychology," with a
Portrait. Crown 8vo, cloth.
8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.
Mr. A. Maurice Low has long been recognised as, next to Lord Bryce, the
most acute, discriminating, and well-informed of the English critics of
America. His long residence in that country and his exhaustive study of
certain phases of American life have given him a background for the
interpretation of their political life.
Mr. Low has written this interpretation of President Wilson "because the
man to-day who occupies the largest place in the world's thought is
almost as little understood by his own people as he is by the peoples of
other countries, and still remains an enigma," but his point of view as
an interpreter is that of a contemporary foreign observer who, while
having the benefit of long residence in the United States and an
intimate knowledge of its people and politics, may justly claim a
detached point of view and to be uninfluenced by personal or political
considerations.
Peace-Making at Paris. By SISLEY HUDDLESTON. Large Crown 8vo,
cloth.
7s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.
Mr. Huddleston has been one of the most independent commentators of the
proceedings at the Paris Conference, with a keen sense of the realities,
and his despatches have, in the phrase of one of our best-known authors,
made him "easily the best" of the Paris correspondents. This book aims
at giving a broad account of the seven months which followed the
Armistice; but the writer has a point of view and has not told the story
of these memorable days objectively, such as might have been done by any
compiler with the aid of the newspapers. A resident in Paris, he has
lived close to the heart of the Conference, and throws a vivid light on
certain events which it is of the utmost importance to understand. Thus
the famous "moderation interview," which was followed by the telegram of
protest from 370 M.P.'s and the return to Westminster of the Prime
Minister, who made the most sensational speech of his career, came from
his pen. The attitude of Mr. Wilson is specially studied; his apotheosis
and the waning of his star and his apparent lapse from "Wilsonianism" is
explained. There is shown the dramatic clash of ideas. Special attention
is devoted to the strange and changing policy in Russia, and some
extremely curious episodes are revealed. This is not merely a timely
publication, but the volume is likely to preserve for many years its
place as the most illuminating piece of work about the two hundred odd
days in Paris. It is certain to raise many controversies, and it is one
of those books which it is indispensable to read.
Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman. Edited with an
Introduction by THOMAS B. HARNED (One of Walt Whitman's Literary
Executors). Cloth.
8s. 6d. Net. Inland Postage 6d.
Anne Gilchrist, a charming woman of rare literary culture and
intelligence, who was born in 1828 and died in 1885, was Whitman's first
notable female eulogist in England, her essay on him being a valuable
piece of pioneer-criticism. Admiration in her case became identified
with love; in the 'seventies she wrote Whitman ardent love letters, the
contents of which would have surprised any literary man less acquainted
than he was to heroic candour. Whitman was not insensible to the
affectionate feelings of Mrs. Gilchrist (her husband died in 1861), and
his share of their correspondence is of considerable interest to
students of "Leaves of Grass."
Breaking the Hindenburg Line: The Story of the 46th (North Midland)
Division. By RAYMOND E. PRIESTLEY, Author of "Antarctic Adventure."
Illustrated. Large Crown 8vo, cloth. (Second Impression.)
7s. 6d. Net. Inland Postage, 6d.
Written by a member of the Division for his comrades and their relatives
and friends, the book is first of all intended to place on record for
the North Midland people the deeds of their men during the weeks which
crowned four years of steadfast endeavour during the Great War.
It has, however, a wider significance, and thus deserves a wider
circulation. The North Midland county regiments were composed mainly of
miners, machinists, operatives and agriculturists: men without military
traditions or militant desires. The last men to take to war without an
all-compelling reason.
The Transvaal Surrounded. By W. J. LEYDS, Litt.D., Author of "The
First Annexation of the Transvaal." With Maps. Demy 8vo, cloth.
(Spring, 1920.)
21s. 0d. Inland Postage, 6d.
This work is a continuation of "The First Annexation of the Transvaal"
by the same author, and like the previous volume is based chiefly on
British documents, Blue Books, and other official records. References
are given to these, and the reader can form his own opinion from them.
To find his way through the overwhelming mass of documents is only
possible for the man who for long years drew up and signed most of the
papers issued by his Government. For the official records accessible to
the historian are incomplete; they must be supplemented by the archives
of the Republic. Only when this has been done--as it has now by one who
knows--will the history of the relations between England and the Boers
be freed from falsehood and slander.
Modern Japan: Its Political, Military and Industrial Development.
By WILLIAM MONTGOMERY MCGOVERN, Ph.D., M.R.A.D., F.R.A.I., M.J.S.,
etc. Lecturer on Japanese, School of Oriental Studies (Unv. of
Lond.), Priest of the Nishi, Hongwaryi, Kyoto, Japan, (Spring,
1920.)
21s. 0d. Inland Postage, 6d.
Unlike the book of casual impressions by the tourist or globe-trotter or
a tedious work of reference for the library, Mr. McGovern's book on
"Modern Japan," gives for the average educated man an interesting
description of the evolution of Japan as a modern world Power, and
describes the gradual triumphs over innumerable obstacles which she
accomplished. The book relates how the Restoration of 1867 was carried
out by a small coterie of ex-Samurai, in whose hands, or in that of
their successors, political power has ever since remained. We see
portrayed the perfecting of the Bureaucratic machine, the general,
political and institutional history, the stimulation of militarism and
Imperialism, and centralised industry. It is a vivid account of the real
Japan of to-day, and of the process by which it has become so. Though
comprehensible to the non-technical reader, yet the most careful student
of Far Eastern affairs will find much of value in the acute analysis of
the Japanese nation. The author is one who has resided for years in
Japan, was largely educated there, who was in the Japanese Government
service, and who, by his fluent knowledge of the language, was in
intimate contact with all the leading statesmen of to-day. Furthermore
his position as priest of the great Buddhist temple of Kyoto brought him
in touch with phases of Japanese life most unusual for a European. While
neither pro nor anti-Japanese, he has delineated the extraordinary
efficiency of the machine of State (so largely modelled on Germany),
while, at the same time, he has pointed out certain dangers inherent in
its autocratic bureaucracy.
_TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION_
Byways in Southern Tuscany. By KATHERINE HOOKER. With 60 full-page
Illustrations, besides sketches in the text and a removable
Frontispiece, the end papers being a coloured map of Southern
Tuscany by Porter Garnett. Demy 8vo, cloth.
18s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.
In addition to its absorbing historic interest this book has the claim
of recording the impressions of a vivacious and observant lady who
describes what she has seen in modern Tuscany from San Galgano to
Sorano.
Those who like books which conjure up beautiful historic places and
fascinating romances of real life will be sure to enjoy this handsome
volume. Among the stories related by the author is the harrowing one of
Nello Pannocchieschi told by Dante, the scene of which is the ill-famed
Maremma, mentioned in a proverb as a district where "You grow rich in a
year, but die in six months."
The Romantic Roussillon: In the French Pyrenees. By ISABEL SAVORY.
With Illustrations by M. LANDSEER MACKENZIE. Super Royal 8vo.
25s. 0d. NET Inland Postage 6d.
This book is written for a double purpose: to reveal to lovers of
sculpture the beauties of certain Romanesque work hitherto hidden in
remote corners of the Pyrenees, and to suggest to travellers the
attractions of a little country formerly known as the Roussillon, which
now forms part of the Pyrénées Orientales.
Well off the beaten track, though within easy reach of London, it should
appeal to lovers of fine scenery and to students of Romanesque and
mediæval architecture.
Miss Isabel Savory, author of "The Tail of the Peacock" and "A
Sportswoman in India," has explored every inch of it. Each chapter is a
witness to the writer's research in the Library at Perpignan, coupled
with a graphic description of the country from an artistic point of
view, and lively portraits of the Catalam as he exists to-day.
Miss Muriel Landseer MacKenzie, sculptor and great-niece of Sir Edwin
Landseer, gives a series of pencil drawings of which the collotype
process makes faithful reproductions. Apart from their own merit, they
represent subjects of which apparently no records exist, details of
Byzantine and Romanesque architecture discovered in neglected abbeys,
old churches, and ruins in the hills.
At the end of the book there is a map and a few practical notes for
travellers which indicate that prices are moderate, and that there are
good roads for motorists, though the country is pre-eminently adapted
for those who like the informality of the knapsack and the mountain
path.
In the Wilds of South America: Six Years of Exploration in
Colombia, Venezuela, British Guiana, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina,
Paraguay, and Brazil. By LEO E. MILLER, of the American Museum of
Natural History. First Lieutenant in the United States Aviation
Corps. With 48 Full-page Illustrations and with maps. Demy 8vo,
cloth.
21s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.
This volume represents a series of almost continuous explorations hardly
ever paralleled in the huge areas traversed. The author is a
distinguished field naturalist--one of those who accompanied Colonel
Roosevelt on his famous South American expedition--and his first object
in his wanderings over 150,000 miles of territory was the observation of
wild life; but hardly second was that of exploration. The result is a
wonderfully informative, impressive, and often thrilling narrative in
which savage peoples and all but unknown animals largely figure, which
forms an infinitely readable book and one of rare value for geographers,
naturalists, and other scientific men.
Millions from Waste. By Frederick A. TALBOT, Author of "The Oil
Conquest of the World," "All About Inventions and Discoveries,"
"Moving Pictures; How they are Made and Worked," "Practical
Cinematography," "The Building of a Great Canadian Railway," etc.,
etc., etc. Demy 8vo, cloth.
21s. 0d. NET Inland Postage, 6d.
In this book, Mr. Frederick A. Talbot, whose many volumes dealing with
invention, science, and industry in a popular manner have achieved such
a successful vogue, introduces us to what may very appropriately be
described as a fairyland of successful endeavour in a little known
field. The present work does not aim at being a treatise upon the whole
subject, because it is far too vast to be covered within the covers of a
single volume. He takes us, as it were, into the less frequented, yet
more readily accessible by-ways, where exceptional opportunities occur
for one and all sections of the community to contribute to one of the
greatest economic issues of the day.
Every industry, every home, contributes to the waste problem; each
incurs a certain proportion of residue which it cannot use. This
circumstance, combined with the knowledge that it is our duty to
discover a commercial use for such by-products, has been responsible for
many happy stories of success achieved during voyages of discovery which
the author duly records.
Mr. Talbot does not confine himself to a mere recital of the so-called
waste products. He describes how their recovery and exploitations may be
profitably conducted, so that the present volume is of decided practical
value. He treats of the fertility of thought displayed by the inventor,
chemist, and engineer in the evolution of simple ways and means to turn
despised materials into indispensable articles of commerce. Many of the
appliances are of a striking and highly ingenious character and cannot
fail to excite interest.
The Nations and the League. By Various Writers. With an
Introductory Chapter by Sir GEORGE PAISH. Crown 8vo, cloth.
7s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.
This important work presents the views of eminent men of different
nationalities upon one of the most burning questions of the day. French
views are supplied by M. Léon Bourgeois, President of the Association
Française pour la Société des Nations, and the famous French barrister,
M. André Mater, whose historical account of experiments already made in
International Leagues, is of high interest. The President of Columbia
University, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, supplies an essay on Patriotism
in which this noble quality is rightly adjusted to a larger idea of
human brotherhood than has formerly been connected with it. Sir Sidney
Low presents a British view, and Messrs. Louis Strauss and A. Heringa
contribute Dutch and Belgian views respectively. Mr. Johan Castberg,
President of the Norwegian Odelsting, and the celebrated explorer, Dr.
Nansen, write for Norway, and the Germans have a spokesman in Professor
Lujo Brentano, of Munich. Sir George Paish brings his long experience
and expert knowledge to bear on the economic questions that confront the
League.
Local Development Law: A Survey of the Powers of Local Authorities
in Regard to Housing, Roads, Buildings, Lands and Town Planning. By
H. C. DOWDALL, Barrister-at-Law, Lecturer on Town Planning Law in
the University of Liverpool and Legal Member of the Town Planning
Institute. Demy 8vo, cloth.
10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.
This book, which incorporates the important legislation just passed on
the subject, has been written at the request of architects and surveyors
as well as lawyers, council clerks, and councillors, who have complained
that they have been unable to find the kind of information which it
supplies in a brief, comprehensive, and intelligible form.
For the law of housing, roads, parks, open spaces, allotments, public
buildings, town planning, private Bill procedure, compensation, and
kindred matters bearing on the public control of land and the use of
land for public purposes is contained in many large volumes through
which even a skilled lawyer finds his way with difficulty. Mr. Dowdall's
work deals with all these subjects systematically and fully, almost in
the form of a code, but it is held together and enlivened by a certain
measure of historical and illustrative matter, and avoids unnecessary
detail by giving references through which the fullest information is
made readily accessible to those who desire it, but perhaps do not know
where to look for it.
The author is of opinion that local authorities are often imperfectly
aware of the full range and scope of the powers which they enjoy, or of
the manner in which they might be co-ordinated and brought to bear upon
what is, after all, the single and indivisible problem of town planning
and town improvement.
My Italian Year. Observations and Reflections in Italy, 1917-18. By
JOSEPH COLLINS. Demy 8vo, cloth.
10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage. 6d.
In the latter part of 1917 the author was assigned to military duty in
Italy. The nature of his duties brought him in close contact with
Italians in every walk of life and every part of the kingdom. Italy was
not previously unknown to him, as he had made already frequent visits.
He presents a study of the Italian temperament, describes the different
social classes, gives a study of the governmental machine, describes
various sights and monuments (not at all in the tourist manner), and
altogether writes a very original book. The author has been trained by a
life of observation, examination and deduction, as the work itself
clearly shows. He writes with lucidity and charm, and though, as he
says, he has been since childhood a lover of Italy, he writes with great
impartiality of certain features of the Italian people. Despite the fact
that the war enters the book to a certain extent, its main interest is
by no means the war, but the fascinating study it presents of the
Italian character, ways and manners, and of Italy generally.
Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. By W. TROTTER. New Library
Edition. Revised and Enlarged. Large Crown 8vo, cloth.
8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.
PRESS OPINIONS OF THE FIRST EDITION.
"An exceedingly original essay on individual and social
psychology."--THE NEW STATESMAN.
"It is a balanced and inspiring study of one of the prime factors of
human advance."--THE TIMES.
"The main purpose of Mr. Trotter's book, which may be commended both for
its logic and its circumspection, is to suggest that the science of
psychology is not a mass of dreary and indefinite generalities, but if
studied in relation to other branches of biology, a guide in the actual
affairs of life, enabling the human mind to foretell the course of human
action."--DAILY TELEGRAPH.
Boy-Work: Exploitation or Training? By the Rev. SPENCER J. GIBB,
Author of "The Problem of Boy-Work," etc. Large Crown 8vo, cloth.
8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.
Mr. Spencer Gibb Is well known as a writer on the social and economic
problems which arise from the employment of boys. His new book, is a
systematic consideration of these problems, as the conclusion of the War
has left them, and of the remedies which are being proposed. It seeks to
co-ordinate these reforms so as to lead to a solution of the problem.
But the book is of wider than merely economic and industrial interest.
The problem as Mr. Gibb sees it is not only one of boy-work, but of the
_boy at work_. He therefore examines, with close analysis and
sympathetic knowledge, the psychology and physiology of the boy at the
age of entering upon work and in the succeeding years, and traces the
reaction of working conditions, not only upon his economic future, but
upon his character.
The Land and the Soldier. By FREDERICK C. HOWE, Author of "The Only
Possible Peace," etc. Demy 8vo, cloth.
8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.
The author believes that this is the moment for extensive social and
agricultural reconstruction: the large bodies of returning soldiers on
the outlook for work gives an unparalleled opportunity for experiment
toward this; and the war experience of the Government gained in
financing and organising war industries and communities could be applied
with great advantage and effect. The plan is based on the organisation
of farm colonies somewhat after the Danish models, not on reclaimed or
distant land, but upon land never properly cultivated, often near the
large cities, and aims to connect with the communities thus formed the
social advantages of, for instance, the garden villages of England. In
fact, the author advances a broad and thoughtful programme, looking
toward an extensive agricultural and social organisation, and based upon
a long and careful study of experiments in this line in other times and
countries as well as here.
It is a book that no one concerned with reconstruction can afford to
neglect.
The Only Possible Peace. By FREDERICK C. HOWE, Author of "Privilege
and Democracy," "The City," "The Hope of Democracy," etc. Large
Crown 8vo, cloth.
7s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d.
Under modern industrial conditions it is conflicts springing from
economic forces that are mainly responsible for war forces that seek for
control of other people's lands, territories, trade resources, or the
land and water ways which control such economic opportunities. Mr.
Howe's work, keeping these essential points in view, is an attempt to
show how to anticipate and avoid war rather than how to provide means
for the arbitration of disputes after they have arisen. Mr. Howe, a
widely known student of economics and international questions, has here
produced a book of the highest importance.
Nationalities in Hungary. By ANDRÉ DE HEVESY. Crown 8vo, cloth.
6s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 4d.
This is a study of the many and various nationalities of which Hungary
is composed, of their respective characters, and of the problems which
confront these nationalities. The author advocates a sort of United
States of Hungary, giving each nationality the fullest liberty of
internal self-determination. Included in the work is an ethnographical
map of Hungary which is of great assistance to the reader.
The New America. By FRANK DILNOT, Author of "Lloyd George: the Man
and His Story," etc. Crown 8vo, cloth.
5s. 0d. NET Inland Postage 4d.
This volume presents in a series of short, vivacious sketches the
impressions made on a trained observer from England of life in the
United States during 1917 and 1918. Manners, outlook and temperament are
dealt with appreciatively, and there is a good-humored analysis of how
Americans eat, drink and amuse themselves. The chapters include "The
Women of America," "American Hustle and Humour," "President Wilson at
Close Quarters." There is an intimate character-sketch at first-hand of
General Rush C. Hawkins, who raised and commanded the New York Zouaves
in the Civil War, with a narrative of some of his conversations with
Lincoln.
Home Rule Through Federal Devolution. By FREDERICK W. PIM. With an
Introduction by FREDERIC HARRISON. Paper covers.
1s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 2d.
The author assumes that there is a general consensus that extensive
modifications of our existing legislative and administrative systems are
urgently required, and that all indications seem to show that the
present time offers an exceptional opportunity for dealing with them. He
offers federal devolution as the solution of the Irish question. Mr.
Frederic Harrison makes a valuable contribution to the pamphlet.
Bye Paths in Curio Collecting. By ARTHUR HAYDEN, Author of "Chats
on Old Clocks," "Chats on Old Silver," etc. With a Frontispiece and
72 Full Page Illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth.
21s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.
The broad way of collecting is crowded with bargain-hunters. Competitors
are keen and prices are high. All real collectors love peregrinations
into the unknown, and have often stumbled upon quaint and long-forgotten
objects which were once in everyday use, but are now relegated to the
attic or the lumber-room. In furniture there are many objects not deemed
desirable by the fashionable collector; in porcelain and earthenware
there is still much that has not reached the noisy mart to be chaffered
over as being rare. There are precious and beautiful things
comparatively unsought and unconsidered. Modernity has forgotten many
by-gone necessities. The tinder-box with its endless varieties has not
escaped studious attention but it has not come into the forefront of
collecting as has the ornate and bejewelled snuff-box with its more
highly attractive appearance. Old Playing-Cards, Old Fans, Silhouettes,
Patch-Boxes, Snuffers, Old Keys, Old Chests and Coffers, Earrings, Brass
Table-Bells, Carved Watch-Stands, Curious Teapots, Tea-Caddies and
Caddy-Spoons, Tobacco-Boxes, Tobacco-Stoppers, have their appeal to
collectors who have specialised and have become experts--that is, have
left the highway of collecting and pursued a delightful search in the
bye-paths. This volume deals with these, among other subjects.
The author has drawn upon his notebooks for twenty-five years, and has
opened to the reader a wonderful storehouse of miscellaneous information
illuminated with a gallery of photographic reproductions. As a pleasant
guide in the bye-paths of collecting, Mr. Hayden will fascinate those
real collectors who love collecting for its own sake.
Shakespeare and the Welsh. By FREDERICK J. HARRIES. Demy 8vo,
cloth.
15s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.
The author has dealt with his highly interesting subject in a manner
both critical and attractive. Not only has he examined Shakespeare's
knowledge of Welsh characteristics through a study of his Welsh
characters, but he has also collected much valuable information
regarding the Celtic sources from which Shakespeare drew his materials.
The opportunities which probably presented themselves to the poet for
studying Welshmen at first hand are suggested, and an endeavour is made
to arrive at an explanation of Shakespeare's singularly sympathetic
attitude toward the Welsh nation. What will strike the general reader
most, perhaps, is the variety of topics which arise around Shakespeare's
Celtic allusions, and a subject of great interest to the Welsh reader
will be the claim that Shakespeare was descended through his paternal
grandmother from the old Welsh kings. The claim is not a mere
speculative one, for a pedigree is given. The work is unique in many
respects, and should find a welcome not merely among Welshmen, but among
all Shakespeare students.
My Commonplace Book. J.T. HACKETT. Dem 8vo, Cloth.
12s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.
The title of this bock, it is needless to say, does not mean that the
contents are commonplace. It is a very rich collection of choice
extracts from the verse and prose of famous writers, and writers who
deserve to be famous. Swinburne is particularly well represented, as is
seldom the case in anthologies. The arrangement of the book and the
accuracy of the matter have been the subject of careful consideration.
Some Greek Masterpieces in Dramatic and Bucolic Poetry Thought into
English Verse. By WILLIAM STEBBING, M.A., Hon. Fellow of Worcester
College, Oxford, and Fellow of King's College, London.
7s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.
The author, who is a scholar, presents in this volume an English verse
anthology of two departments in Greek poetry. Among the passages and
poems which he has rendered are the charge against Olympus by
Prometheus, the "Hymn of the Furies," Iphigenia's appeals to her father
and mother, "Hue and Cry after Cupid," etc. To convey the poet's thought
has been the translator's purpose, and his versions are particularly
intended for the reader who has classical tastes without having had a
thorough classical education.
The Legend of Roncevaux. Adapted from "La Chanson de Roland," by
SUSANNA H. ULOTH. With four illustrations by John Littlejohns,
R.B.A. Small 4to, cloth.
5s. 0d. NET Inland Postage, 6d.
Of all the legends circulating round the name of Charlemagne none is
more famous and popular than that of the Paladins Roland and Oliver. The
poem known as "La Chanson de Roland" is the earliest epic in the French
language, dating in all probability from a period not long after the
conquest of England by William of Normandy and before the first Crusade.
Mrs. Uloth has written a metrical and rhymed version of the most
important part of the "Chanson," namely, the story of the treachery
which led to the battle of Roncevaux, and the thrilling series of
encounters which terminated in the heroic death of Oliver and the lonely
and mystical death of Roland. There are not many rivals in the field,
and her work should, therefore, command a good deal of interest. It may
be added that Mr. John Littlejohns, who illustrates the work, has won a
considerable reputation for originality and charm in drawing and
painting.
The Collected Stories of Standish O'Grady. With an Introduction by
Æ. First 3 volumes now issued. Crown 8vo, cloth.
4s. 6d. NET EACH Inland Postage 6d.
THE CUCULAIN CYCLE.
(1) The Coming of Cuculain.
(2) In the Gates of the North.
(3) The Triumph and Passing of Cuculain.
These three books contain the essential and most beautiful portions of
Mr. Standish O'Grady's "Bardic History of Ireland," the work which
proved to be the starting-point of Ireland's Literary Renaissance. That
work has long been unobtainable, and is now offered for the first time
in a convenient and popular form, which will enable every reader to make
the acquaintance of the most striking figure in contemporary Anglo-Irish
literature. The debt which a generation of brilliant poets and
dramatists owe to the author of these Cuculain stories has well been
described by one of his disciples, who wrote:--
"In the 'Bardic History of Ireland' he opened, with a heroic gesture,
the doors which revealed to us in Ireland the giant lord of the Red
Branch Knights and the Fianna. Though a prose writer, he may be called
the last of the bards--a true comrade of Homer."
A NEW VOLUME OF THE TALBOT LITERARY STUDIES.
Irish Books and Irish People. By STEPHEN GWYNN, M.A. Crown 8vo, cloth
4s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.
Whatever Captain Gwynn writes is worth reading. He has a knowledge of
the literary value of Irish books, and the complex personality of Irish
possessed by few present-day writers, and he imparts his knowledge with
that peculiar detached conviction of the hurler on the ditch. Whether
one accepts or rejects the opinions expressed, they are always worthy of
consideration, while the fine choice of language and beautiful literary
style will well repay a second reading. Capt. Gwynn deals with such
subjects as Novels of Irish Life, A Century of Irish Humour, Literature
Among the Illiterates, Irish Education and Irish Character, Yesterday in
Ireland, etc., etc.
To Book Lovers.
If you would like to receive future issues of this catalogue you are
invited to send a post card to that effect to T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd. 1,
Adelphi Terrace, London, W.C.2.
_Please write your name and full address clearly._
Swords and Flutes. Poems. By WILLIAM KEAN SEYMOUR. Crown 8vo,
cloth. 4s. net.
4s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage, 3d.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY OF MR. SEYMOUR'S WORK.
"We recognise not so much audacity of experiment as a sound loyalty to
the best standards of the past, and an almost acute appreciation of
beauty both of vision and form.... Mr. Seymour's poetry is full of rich
and multi-coloured pageantry, a sheer delight to the eye and
imagination."--THE BOOKMAN.
"Mr. Seymour's verse is full of a haunting, fugitive sense of beauty,
and owes allegiance to a school of lyric craftsmanship which is rapidly
falling out of date. But it is something more than this. Mr. Seymour
believes that poetry should not only beautify, but interpret
life."--DAILY TELEGRAPH.
"The Measure" and "Down Stream." Two Plays. By GRAHAM RAWSON,
Author of "Stroke of Marbot," etc. Crown 8vo. Paper Cover.
4s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 3d.
"The Measure" is an amusing comedy of contemporary life, in a prologue
and two acts, dealing with the adventures of two bachelors who become
entangled in a family containing three daughters.
"Down Stream" is a one-act play whose action takes place in a
supposititious country in South-Eastern Europe, where the King traps one
of his Ministers neatly, and then deals with him in an unexpected
fashion.
Of Mr. Rawson's previous volume ("The Stroke of Marbot," Fisher Unwin,
1917) the _Times_ said: "They are effective plays which should act well,
and the stage directions are so given as to make them quite good reading
for the study."
LATEST ADDITION TO THE TALBOT PRESS BOOKLETS
The Spoiled Buddha. An Eastern Play in two Acts. By HELEN WADDELL.
Paper Covers.
1s. 0d. NET Inland Postage 3d.
The play is about the Buddha, in the days before he became a god; and
about Binzuru, who was his favourite disciple, and who might have become
even as the Buddha, only that he saw a woman passing by, and desired her
beauty and so fell from grace.
Songs of the Island Queen. By PEADAR MacTOMAIS. Paper Covers.
1s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 3d.
"Those are songs of a dreamer of Eire,
A scion of a race that is old
--Of a race that is strong,
A people begotten of freemen,
Rocked on the cradle of song."
West African Forests and Forestry. By A. HAROLD UNWIN, D.Oec.,
M.Can.S.F.E. Author of "Future Forest Trees." With upwards of 150
Illustrations. Cloth. (Spring, 1920.)
£3 3s. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.
The author, late Senior Conservator of Forestry in Nigeria, having spent
eleven years in West Africa in forestry work, has had exceptional
experience. He starts by dealing in general with West African forests,
then successively in geographical order, with the trees and forests of
Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Ivory and Gold Coasts, Togo, Nigeria,
and the British Sphere of the Cameroons. He supplies notes on timber
trees both for export and local use, and gives throughout the botanical
and vernacular names of indigenous trees. Dr. Unwin has also chapters on
the oil beans, seeds and nuts of the West African forests; on the oil
palm and palm kernel industry, and the question of the forest in
relation to agriculture. The work is an elaborate one, marked by
singular thoroughness in its execution.
Collected Fruits of Occult Teaching. By A. P. SINNETT. Demy 8vo,
cloth. (Spring, 1920.)
15s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage. 6d.
Mr. Sinnett, who is one of the leading lights of Theosophy and one of
the ablest exponents of reincarnation and the science of the evolution
of races, embodies in this work the deeply interesting information
which, as an occultist, he states he has derived about the human soul,
its hereafter and other matters.
Much of the work is due to the teaching of the occult master with whom
Mr. Sinnett claims to be in touch. It cannot be doubted that even the
most sceptical reader will be thrilled and impressed by more than one of
the chapters of this remarkable and fascinating book.
The Religion of a Doctor. By THOMAS BODLEY SCOTT, M.D., Author of
"The Road to a Healthy Old Age." Crown 8vo, cloth.
5s. 0d. NET Inland Postage 4d.
Dr. Scott, who is well known for his skill as a physician, offers here a
sort of modern companion to the famous "Religio Medici." The essays in
this interesting volume enable the reader to view the spiritual side of
a contemplative man of science of our day.
Revelations of Monte Carlo Roulette. By J. COUSINS LAWRENCE. Crown
8vo, cloth. (Spring, 1920.)
3s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 4d.
Mr. Lawrence has had an extensive experience in studying roulette
playing at Monte Carlo, and the result is an accumulation of evidence
supporting his accusation of unfair control on the part of the bank in
the notorious Casino. The book is a full and descriptive account of the
methods of croupiers in dealing with players, of the observation
maintained by the officials over both croupiers and the players. The
work is full of typical incidents, tragic and amusing, observed on the
spot.
Blind Alley. By W. L. GEORGE. Author of "The Second Blooming," etc.
Crown 8vo. (Second Impression.)
9s. 0d. NET Inland Postage 6d.
"A powerful piece of work, and is at once a protest against the
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List of Volumes:
ARCADY: FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE.
BEFORE THE GREAT PILLAGE.
THE COMING OF THE FRIARS.
RANDOM ROAMING, AND OTHER PAPERS.
STUDIES BY A RECLUSE.
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON.
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LIST OF VOLUMES.
English-French and French-English Dictionary.
English-German and German-English Dictionary.
English-Italian and Italian-English Dictionary.
English-Spanish and Spanish-English Dictionary.
English-Swedish and Swedish-English Dictionary.
Latin-English and English-Latin Dictionary.
Spanish America: Its Romance, Reality and Future. By C. R. ENOCK,
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Illustrated and with Map. 2 vols. Demy 8vo, cloth. (Spring, 1920.)
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Starting with the various States of Central America, Mr. Enock then
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the Spanish Main, conducts the reader along the Amazon Valley, gives a
special chapter to Brazil and another to the River Plate and Pampas.
Thus all the States of Central and South America are covered. The work
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and the cities, the flora and fauna, the varied resources of South
America, its trade, railways, its characteristics generally, and
suggests the possible future of this vast, and, as yet, it may be almost
said, unexplored region with its infinitude of opportunities for
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Series"; he is one of the best-known and most authoritative writers on
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_THE SOUTH AMERICAN SERIES._ Illustrated. Demy 8vo, cloth.
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1. CHILE. By G. F. Scott Elliott, F.R.G.S. (5th Impression.)
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3. MEXICO. By C. Reginald Enock. F.R.G.S. (5th Impression.)
4. ARGENTINA. By W. A. Hirst. (5th Impression.)
5. BRAZIL. By Pierre Denis. (3rd Impression.)
6. URUGUAY. By W. H. Koebel. (3rd Impression.)
7. GUIANA: British, French and Dutch. By James Rodway.
8. VENEZUELA. By Leonard V. Dalton, B.Sc. (3rd Impression.)
9. LATIN AMERICA: Its Rise and Progress. By F. Garcia Calderon. With a
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10. COLOMBIA. By Phanor J. Eder, A.B., LL.B. (3rd Impression.)
11. ECUADOR. By C. Reginald Enock. F.R.G.S. (2nd Impression.)
12. BOLIVIA. By Paul Wallé.
13. PARAGUAY. By W. H. Koebel. (2nd Impression.)
14. CENTRAL AMERICA. By W. H. Koebel.
_THE STORY OF THE NATIONS._
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Japanese, King's College, London, and 35 Illustrations and Maps.
Edition
9th 1. Rome.
8th 2. The Jews.
9th 3. Germany.
7th 4. Carthage.
8th 5. Alexander's Empire.
9th 6. The Moors in Spain.
10th 7. Ancient Egypt.
7th 8. Hungary.
6th 9. The Saracens.
6th 10. Ireland.
7th 11. Chaldea.
4th 12. The Goths.
6th 13. Assyria.
5th 14. Turkey.
5th 15. Holland.
6th 16. Mediæval France.
4th 17. Persia.
4th 18. Phoenicia.
4th 19. Media.
3rd 20. The Hansa Towns.
6th 21. Early Britain.
4th 22. The Barbary Corsairs.
6th 23. Russia.
4th 24. The Jews under the Romans.
5th 25. Scotland.
3rd 26. Switzerland.
3rd 27. Mexico.
3rd 28. Portugal.
3rd 29. The Normans.
3rd 30. The Byzantine Empire.
3rd 31. Sicily: Phoenician, Greek and Roman.
2nd 32. The Tuscan Republic.
3rd 33. Poland.
3rd 34. Parthia.
5th 35. The Australian Commonwealth.
3rd 36. Spain.
6th 37. Japan.
8th 38. South Africa.
5th 39. Venice.
3rd 40. The Crusades.
3rd 41. Vedic India.
3rd 42. The West Indies and the Spanish Main.
2nd 43. Bohemia.
3rd 44. The Balkans.
3rd 45. Canada.
4th 46. British India.
2nd 47. Modern France.
2nd 48. The Franks.
2nd 49. Austria.
2nd 50. Modern England before the Reform Bill.
3rd 51. China.
3rd 52. Modern England from the Reform Bill to the
Death of Queen Victoria.
2nd 53. Modern Spain.
2nd 54. Modern Italy.
2nd 55. Norway.
4th 56. Wales.
2nd 57. Mediæval Rome.
2nd 58. The Papal Monarchy.
4th 59. Mediæval India under Mohammedan Rule.
1st 60. Parliamentary England.
3rd 61. Buddhist India.
2nd 62. Mediæval England.
1st 63. The Coming of Parliament.
2nd 64. The Story of Greece from the Earliest Times to A.D. 14.
2nd 65. The Roman Empire.
66. Denmark Sweden.
_THE "CHATS" SERIES._ PRACTICAL GUIDES FOR COLLECTORS, With
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VOLUME.
Chats on Royal Copenhagen Porcelain: Its History and Development
from the 18th Century to the Present Day. By ARTHUR HAYDEN, Author
of "Chats on English Earthenware," etc. With 56 Illustrations.
Large crown 8vo, cloth.
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The above volume has been condensed from the author's edition deluxe,
published a few years ago, concerning which the "Pall Mall Gazette"
said: "No book on ceramics has been awaited with so much interest by
collectors as Mr. Arthur Hayden's work on 'Royal Copenhagen Porcelain.'
Hayden has handled this eventful history with the skill of the practised
writer, the enthusiasm of the collector, and the method of the curator."
In presenting it in a cheaper edition, although, naturally, many of the
illustrations have been omitted, there is remaining a gallery of
examples richly illuminating the subject. In the letterpress nothing has
been omitted which is of importance. The full tables of marks which
appeared in the first edition are here reproduced. There is no other
volume on the subject, and, therefore, to all who are interested in
Copenhagen porcelain, now considered to be the leading factory in
Europe, this volume is indispensable.
An additional chapter deals with Copenhagen Faience, which has qualities
of its own appealing to connoisseurs.
NEW IMPRESSIONS IN PREPARATION.
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Chats on English China. By ARTHUR HAYDEN. (6th Impression.)
Chats on Old Silver. By ARTHUR HAYDEN. (2nd Impression.)
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Chats on Costume. By G. WOOLLISCROFT RHEAD. (2nd Impression.)
Chats on Pewter. By H. J. L. J. MASSÉ, M.A. (2nd Impression.)
Chats on Old Lace and Needlework. By Mrs. LOWES. (3rd Impression.)
Chats on Postage Stamps. By FRED. J. MELVILLE.
Chats on Old Coins. By FRED. W. BURGESS. (2nd Impression.)
Chats on Oriental China. By J. F. BLACKER. (3rd Impression.)
Chats on English Earthenware. By ARTHUR HAYDEN. (3rd Impression.)
OTHER VOLUMES
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Chats on Old Furniture. By ARTHUR HAYDEN. (5th Impression.)
Chats on Old Miniatures. By J. J. FOSTER, F.S.A.
Chats on Autographs. By A. M. BROADLEY.
Chats on Old Jewellery and Trinkets. By MACIVER PERCIVAL.
Chats on Cottage and Farmhouse Furniture. By ARTHUR HAYDEN.
Chats on Old Copper and Brass. By FRED. W. BURGESS.
Chats on Household Curios. By FRED. W. BURGESS.
Chats on Japanese Prints. By A. DAVISON FICKE.
Chats on Military Curios. By STANLEY C. JOHNSON, M.A.
Chats On Old Clocks. By ARTHUR HAYDEN.
_THE MERMAID SERIES._
The Best Plays of the Old Dramatists, Literal Reproductions of the Old
Text.
With Photogravure Frontispieces. Thin Paper Edition.
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